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DAVID MCLEAN
laughing at funerals "Once again David McLean has captured the voice of the disaffected and disaffection itself in a finely nuanced collection of poetry, "Laughing at Funerals." In this volume, McLean's most accessible, the reader is thrust into the surrealistic reality of existence and painful refractory ennui. McLean is at once melancholy and profound, an extraordinary writer with endless elegance, grace and talent, and a style quite his own. This is your first mandatory literary purchase of 2010. And if it is your only one, count yourself lucky." - Jack Henry Exterior by Pablo Vision
the children lived the banality of goodness the children lived in a dream that centered around suicide until it actually happened; and then there was no dream, just the night outside. they were forgotten and people assumed kids like to play alone in abandoned buildings, somewhat like philosophers in the abandoned structure of dreams they used to dream; for believers live happiest in old and rickety heaps. they assumed children too like abandoned buildings – it's the most respectable sort of living. rooting around in the dust, calling it mother and lover, and nobody ever there to listen to them. people assumed they liked that – after all they were just children
Hindley and Brady would light cigarettes like everybody else, wished their mothers dead like everybody else does, petted small animals or tortured them, or whatever. they were very friendly, says Genesis P, and i see no reason to disagree with him; for mourning is a capricious torment, and it was Hindley's mother in a photo who supervised their murders. there was a television too, apparently, and special things, children. there was pain in a squalid British house, nasty habits, sweat and death, dust and devils and absolutely no evidence of resurrection. there were children – they thought there were too many children living, German wine and knives. there was Myra's love for Ian, and an ax, there was the banality of goodness and the meaningless of life, the poverty of time
EPIC RITES PRESS RELEASE
DAVID MCLEAN
laughing at funerals "The thing that really strikes me about these mostly very short poems is the economy of language McLean employs. He gets it. He understands it. He knows that it doesn't take a very long knife to kill... just a sharp one." - John Yamrus
imperfections of the intellect our intellect's essential imperfection is succession, said Schopenhauer. a mind is a long telescope that sees fuck all at once, so we get to guess whether we threw things together right,
“ghost on the highway”
when the tube we see them through sees one a time. and Homer Simpson says being stupid is why people do things –
we are all ghosts with meaningless gestures, whoever we killed or didn't kill.
we are stupid through not being gods with binoculars, who might see everything,
and our bodies are not art at all, except a passing reference to absurd
our stupidity is squinting one-eyed through tremulous time
theaters where slugs dream our flesh better. we are ghosts with so little in us, a thin film of consciousness presupposing cum and nothing to spatter on our straw and trash. we are love and emptiness
"LAUGHING AT FUNERALS is, in my opinion, the very best work by David McLean. This book establishes McLean as one of the most unique poets of our generation." - Wolfgang Carstens
when we died when we died we noticed after clutching at living so long we had forgotten to be alive – and now it was night
"It may be early 2010 but ‘Laughing at Funerals’ is likely to be the best thing I’ll read this year. David McLean disturbs me the way I like to be disturbed - he is not in the business of making us feel better about ourselves. His work is short, sharp and addictive; his language not only slices through our lazy prejudices, but amputates them clean off." - Gillian Prew
EPIC RITES PRESS RELEASE
DAVID MCLEAN
laughing at funerals Laughing at Funerals is a perfect title for the new collection by David McLean. Like the brilliant author, it is irreverent, surreal, with a Fellini-esque sense of the absurd. Why not laugh at funerals? – there is no afterlife, we don’t even know if we are in real life right now, or in some ungodly parallel universe – and does it matter, anyway? McLean had me with the opening poem:
first thing we do first thing we do let's sit and do nothing and wait until we die, drinking beers and watching sports having opinions about indifferent things, bored out of our minds – let's pretend that that's a life He continues, in his inimitable unsentimental, spare, manner to write of devils, suns, rats, and stars, fear, dread, flowers, and junkie landscapes, and, within the nihilism, somehow, there is passion, life, and a certain, measured feeling of hope, as exemplified in the final poem:
tomorrow tomorrow smells like murder but the sun is shining here and nothing is interested in the coming slaughter so we sacrifice ourselves tonight, to life, but breathe a minute here, under the loveless sunlight It is the assurance, humor, and commitment to contradictory elements which makes this my favorite McLean book to date
LAUGHING AT FUNERALS is David McLean's third full length book. He has had over 900 poems published in 400 zines online and in print over the last three years and has produced four print chapbooks and one electronic. Details are at his blog http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com.
"David McLean has a true poet’s heart. There is not a smidgen of sentimentality to be found in McLean’s poems. Instead of cheapening life and love with maudlin clichés, David McLean shows the value of life and love by writing with brutally accurate observations and merciless truth... Like the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, David McLean cajoles and celebrates death realizing that the two are happily married. He is one of the most consistently brilliant poets I have ever had the pleasure to read. His poems are sap and bullshit free. They should be carved on tombstones." - Misti Rainwater-Lites
- Puma Perl
EPIC RITES PRESS RELEASE
DAVID MCLEAN
laughing at funerals by David McLean $15.50
laughing at funerals is available now through Small Press Distribution at www.spdbooks.org or by addressing Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA, 94710-1409. Phone 510.524.1668 or 800.869.7553 (Toll-free within the US). E-mail spd@spdbooks.org.
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