Description

Eric Kocher

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Like the magazine from which it takes its name, Eric Kocher’s Sky Mall is committed to “making a catalogue of things, / Strange and wonderful, terrifying and sad.” The poems are equally in awe of each object—a towering western redcedar, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the frothiness of clouds—but also worried about the estrangement and alienation that capitalism constructs between beings and the world. Out of this emerges a meditation on parenthood, on togetherness and love, that is both cosmic and absurd.

From the Author

A little over ten years ago, my friend Mark made a joke. He said that I should try to be the first person to publish a poem in Sky Mall Magazine. There was something about shopping for the most inane, kitschy stuff on the planet while flying 30,000 feet above it, just to avoid a moment of boredom, that seemed to be the antithesis of poetry. The words “Sky Mall” got stuck in my head—lodged there. This is almost always how poems happen for me. Language itself seems to be in the way just long enough to build tension before it can open into a space that pulls me forward. These poems finally arrived while I was traveling, first alone, and then the following year with my wife, as a new parent in that hazy dream of the post-pandemic. Writing them felt like going on a shopping spree, of sorts, so I tried to let myself say yes to everything.

About the Author

Eric Kocher teaches Environmental Studies at Wofford College. Some of his poems have previously appeared in 32 Poems, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Oversound, and A Public Space, among others. He lives in upstate South Carolina with his wife, Audrey, and their two children, Oscar and Louise.

Details

Cover art by Steve Snell
ISBN: 978-1-931307-58-1
Cover price: $9.00
Chapbook: 40 pages
Size: 6″ x 9″