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Nick Demske
"Nick Demske writes from culture like the Hollywood version of a rebellious slave, the role shredding off him, culture's synthetic exemplary tales shredding and piling up on the floor of the projector room."—Joyelle McSweeney His name is "a transcendant uber-obsenity that can be understood universally by speakers of any language."
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 9, 2012
I was enchanted by the aggressive nature of these poems, their accusatory stance. Really inventive and super enjoyable to read.
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January 11, 2011Below is the Poets & Writers profile that compelled me to purchase this book (copied from this blog; thanks for typing it out, Sandra Beasley) immediately. I am glad I did, and I especially love his advice:
NICK DEMSKE
Book: NICK DEMSKE
Time Spent Writing the Book: Two Years.
Number of Contests Entered: "About ten. I feel lucky the number is so small."
Sample: "In every sumo, there's a little bulimic awaiting a glorious purge." ("Tragic Songstress")
Source of Inspiration: "My mother died of breast cancer before I was half done with the manuscript. That was a big inspiration. The book is, in part, about bad form. The most blatant way that's enacted in the book is through the form of the poems: They're all loose sonnets--love poems, but their content actively resists the form. Words are cut in half to meet rhyme schemes. The line lengths themselves are so long that the book has to be printed sideways--in landscape, rather than portrait orientation. On many levels, the book is many repetitions of forms that are inappropriate for their contents. My mother dying, my lovely mother dying, was largely the inspiration for this. She had a spirit like wildfire, which could brighten anyone she came in contact with. She was smart, insightful; she loved the natural world and she lived the healthiest life of anyone I have ever met. And yet here she was, incoherent, unable to get off the toilet independently, her very own piss a biohazard. She eventually drowned in fluid in her own lungs. The form--her invalid body--was an inappropriate match for her content, that wildfire, her beautiful spirit. It was after this I realized that, in general, the human body is bad form for the human spirit. Bad form. Bad form."
Advice: "Any advice I give in terms of writing could only be the same advice I would give in the more general terms of life: Enjoy yourself, treat people well, don't take writing too seriously, don't take writing too lightly, make friends and loved ones and spend lots of time enjoying that community. Keep your priorities straight."
NICK DEMSKE
Book: NICK DEMSKE
Time Spent Writing the Book: Two Years.
Number of Contests Entered: "About ten. I feel lucky the number is so small."
Sample: "In every sumo, there's a little bulimic awaiting a glorious purge." ("Tragic Songstress")
Source of Inspiration: "My mother died of breast cancer before I was half done with the manuscript. That was a big inspiration. The book is, in part, about bad form. The most blatant way that's enacted in the book is through the form of the poems: They're all loose sonnets--love poems, but their content actively resists the form. Words are cut in half to meet rhyme schemes. The line lengths themselves are so long that the book has to be printed sideways--in landscape, rather than portrait orientation. On many levels, the book is many repetitions of forms that are inappropriate for their contents. My mother dying, my lovely mother dying, was largely the inspiration for this. She had a spirit like wildfire, which could brighten anyone she came in contact with. She was smart, insightful; she loved the natural world and she lived the healthiest life of anyone I have ever met. And yet here she was, incoherent, unable to get off the toilet independently, her very own piss a biohazard. She eventually drowned in fluid in her own lungs. The form--her invalid body--was an inappropriate match for her content, that wildfire, her beautiful spirit. It was after this I realized that, in general, the human body is bad form for the human spirit. Bad form. Bad form."
Advice: "Any advice I give in terms of writing could only be the same advice I would give in the more general terms of life: Enjoy yourself, treat people well, don't take writing too seriously, don't take writing too lightly, make friends and loved ones and spend lots of time enjoying that community. Keep your priorities straight."
November 6, 2011
I am in love with Nick Demske, or, in other words: I have been Nick Demsked. This surprising series of sonnets is hypercontexualized in the now, is fresh and real. By no means boring poetry.
Nick Demske made me laugh out loud enough that I had to read the poems out loud to others so they could laugh as well. His work is concurrently gripping, hilarious, heartbreaking. He connects with you, gets inside your head, and guides you along the pages. You will be surprised, disgusted, and moved.
It is more than worth it. I haven't loved a book of poetry this much... well... ever. A true work of art in modern poetry.
Nick Demske made me laugh out loud enough that I had to read the poems out loud to others so they could laugh as well. His work is concurrently gripping, hilarious, heartbreaking. He connects with you, gets inside your head, and guides you along the pages. You will be surprised, disgusted, and moved.
It is more than worth it. I haven't loved a book of poetry this much... well... ever. A true work of art in modern poetry.
March 4, 2011
If I wanted 'clever' play with cliche and idiom I'd go watch really bad poetry slam performances on YouTube.
July 8, 2011
Ugh, hipsters shouldn't write poems.
January 25, 2018
Weird. Brash. Wonderfully appalling.
April 24, 2011
I was prepared to be confused by this book, having heard Nick Demske read from his self-titled collection Nick Demske, winner of the Modern Poetics Prize from Fence Books in 2010. His numerous pop culture references and mind-boggling twists and turns in thought may at first seem haphazard or difficult to follow. His passionate reading style, however, won me over, and I was curious to see what the book had to offer.
I am glad that I did. Reading the book brings the poems to new light. The poems are all sonnets, maintaining the fourteen lines and the rhyme schemes of sonnets, but achieving them in completely new and almost unrecognizable ways. The lines are of varied lengths - some quite long and some very short - and the rhymes are sometimes slant, sometimes visual, and sometimes created by hyphenating or truncating a word on one line and continuing on another.
Here is an example from "Common Sense" -
I didn’t think it was loaded. But it was a kn
Ife. So we’re both right. I foresee
Blinding enlightenment. I beat these children like the deadest of horsies.
The people cheer at their victory. Peasants dan
The fragment of the "kn" rhymes with the first syllable of "Dan-cing" (split over two lines).
Demske often refers to himself in his poems, which almost adds an element of the ghazal, and although there are many poems that people may consider outrageous or even offensive (see which is about dead babies), there are elements of beauty in each piece.
From "Creme in Crematorium" -
I love you so much that I jumped
Off a roof I could not see the ground from.
From "Fully Dressed in an Empty Bathtub"-
I could’ve killed // Myself that night, but instead I plucked these shards from my flesh, licked / The lacerations. Fashioned this glowing mosaic.
I am glad that I did. Reading the book brings the poems to new light. The poems are all sonnets, maintaining the fourteen lines and the rhyme schemes of sonnets, but achieving them in completely new and almost unrecognizable ways. The lines are of varied lengths - some quite long and some very short - and the rhymes are sometimes slant, sometimes visual, and sometimes created by hyphenating or truncating a word on one line and continuing on another.
Here is an example from "Common Sense" -
I didn’t think it was loaded. But it was a kn
Ife. So we’re both right. I foresee
Blinding enlightenment. I beat these children like the deadest of horsies.
The people cheer at their victory. Peasants dan
The fragment of the "kn" rhymes with the first syllable of "Dan-cing" (split over two lines).
Demske often refers to himself in his poems, which almost adds an element of the ghazal, and although there are many poems that people may consider outrageous or even offensive (see which is about dead babies), there are elements of beauty in each piece.
From "Creme in Crematorium" -
I love you so much that I jumped
Off a roof I could not see the ground from.
From "Fully Dressed in an Empty Bathtub"-
I could’ve killed // Myself that night, but instead I plucked these shards from my flesh, licked / The lacerations. Fashioned this glowing mosaic.
January 8, 2011
Between the sublime and the subversive, between the crack and the cracked, comes a rollicking new voice. Writing with a shotgun, Nick Demske hits the target. In fact, he obliterates it. His lines are bloody pellets plucked out of his prey. He makes direct contact. “I write death letters to everyone. Indiscriminate.” Scattered as that may seem, Demske’s eponymous debut of nouveau sonnets holds together in surprising ways, both traditional and innovative.
An inveterate wiseacre and skilled punster, the caustic, satiric, and scatological wit is juvenile in an enduring way. One sawed-off gibe follows another almost seamlessly: “I stuck a needle / in my eye and all I got was this lousy needle / in my eye.”
A disembodied ubervoice intones official speak, “In compliance with federal law, you are hereby…” This instantly recognizable mode of address is countered with the “seismic vox” of a regular Joe (Cool), “I dance. I sing. I love to say I told you so.”
Clichés, taglines, techno slang, and catchphrase lingo mix in with general effrontery and occasional prayers, “Please continue to hold and your prayer will be answered …” Demske aims to be obscene and he scrapes the bottom. But the intensity is redeeming.
Underneath the slick surface, a deep affair with a demanding muse rages. Demske follows the language and form like an obsessed explorer seeking the source. He sears his soul into the poems with offhand finesse.
An inveterate wiseacre and skilled punster, the caustic, satiric, and scatological wit is juvenile in an enduring way. One sawed-off gibe follows another almost seamlessly: “I stuck a needle / in my eye and all I got was this lousy needle / in my eye.”
A disembodied ubervoice intones official speak, “In compliance with federal law, you are hereby…” This instantly recognizable mode of address is countered with the “seismic vox” of a regular Joe (Cool), “I dance. I sing. I love to say I told you so.”
Clichés, taglines, techno slang, and catchphrase lingo mix in with general effrontery and occasional prayers, “Please continue to hold and your prayer will be answered …” Demske aims to be obscene and he scrapes the bottom. But the intensity is redeeming.
Underneath the slick surface, a deep affair with a demanding muse rages. Demske follows the language and form like an obsessed explorer seeking the source. He sears his soul into the poems with offhand finesse.
February 24, 2011
Fantastic exploration of the profane, abject, and vulgar via forced sonnets that feel rather like a corpse being stuffed back into a live body. One of the best displays of the excising of language, based on language cliches, ephemera (advertising, phone messages, etc), and their frenetic reworking--language as excrement, the sloughed off. Julia Kristeva eat your ass out. Paired finely with moments of startling imagery and sound: "Cup full of athlete, / Spilling. Huffing mouth-to-mouth at a carrion / Heap, petting these bunnies to pieces" ("Whether My Head Or This Wall Will Be first To Surrender")
On the negative slope, either the poet or the reader gets a little well baked in this. Not sure the commitment to the form and mood and even the theory sustains the entirety of the collection. Or maybe I'm just TV-A.D.D., but I found myself getting eager to finish as I approached the end. Subtle issue--collection is still worth every penny you pay.
On the negative slope, either the poet or the reader gets a little well baked in this. Not sure the commitment to the form and mood and even the theory sustains the entirety of the collection. Or maybe I'm just TV-A.D.D., but I found myself getting eager to finish as I approached the end. Subtle issue--collection is still worth every penny you pay.
December 14, 2010
Plucking the shards from his young body, licking the lacerations, Nick Demske fashions a glowing golden mosaic describing painfully exposed segments of his life, and observations of an ailing planet, in a manner both humorous, shocking, and wise. Written in a post-apocalyptic shaman's hallucinogenic vision of the future by looking through a magnifier at the present, Nick at times walks us through Hell, a tongue-in-cheek tour guide who doesn't flinch or whitewash the human experience.
Huffing life to the fullest, Nick's energy bursts forth as he performs live, which can be witnessed and enjoyed on youtube.
Huffing life to the fullest, Nick's energy bursts forth as he performs live, which can be witnessed and enjoyed on youtube.
May 4, 2012
I was advised not to read this entire book in one sitting, but I did anyway. It was a little overwhelming, then a little tedious, then a little UNDERwhelming. I feel like if I read it again, on short subway trips, or during lunch breaks, I would dig it more, its kind of fratty humor and aggressive take on de Copia and all that.
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December 12, 2012at its high marks, Demske's book can fuck with anything coming out of poetry right now. but where the style fails, boy it's rough. odd to me that joyelle mcsweeney picked this as the fence award winner, as it just seems that it could have... it feels like a demo tape from Biggie, in ways.
May 18, 2011
Not my cup of shit.
October 23, 2011
More than 5 stars. Love Love Love Love Love Love
January 26, 2013
Poetry that somehow leaves you peeing pearls of sweat.
September 13, 2014
My biggest criticism/complaint of this book is the way it sits funny on my bookshelf.
Fantastic poems, though. Exciting, risky, and funny as hell.
Fantastic poems, though. Exciting, risky, and funny as hell.
October 17, 2014
This book is the shit. In a really good way.
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March 10, 2011http://www.spdbooks.org/pages/staff-p... <-----short review there
June 5, 2011
Super interesting and very innovative.
May 1, 2012
This books is fucking crazy in the best way.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews