Advance Praise
“Television was a childhood companion for many of us, and the loving, sometimes complicated, investment we put into those characters comes through in A Very Special Episode. dueck plays with formal construction and forms that allude specifically and often hilariously to poems from the canon. But these poems are about cartoons and wrestling and commercials and Care Bears. Attuned to the specific relevance, joy and pervasiveness of the pop culture that is our culture this collection shows us the ways these trademarks are imprinted on us, are a part of home. As a result we must ask ourselves what it means. Laughs! Games! Serious contemplation! This collection has it all. This book is a delight.” – Dina Del Bucchia, author of It’s a Big Deal!
“Language is a cult. Pop culture is a language. And here dueck is a cult-leading pop-culture language mixmaster, fashioning poems bright as TV, casting strange and true shadows over our real and hyperreal bodies, illuminating our world with its uncanny undulations and strange flashes. He knows that life is the ultimate in binge-watching. So are our brains. dueck’s poems broadcast on all the channels at once, channelling and challenging with technical finesse and flash. He’s embedded himself in the broadband of the now, streaming his incisive and witty 5G reports from inside the contemporary ever-flickering dream machine, the motherboard of all our best and most notorious fantasies.” – Gary Barwin, author No TV for Woodpeckers
“nathan dueck takes nostalgic faves like DuckTales, Pac-Man and the greatest invention of our time – the ThighMaster – and twist/turns them into playful works that slide off the tongue. Like looking at a time capsule of pop culture through a kaleidoscope, this book is a reminder that poetry can be fun like Saturday morning cartoons.” – Daniel Zomparelli, author of Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person
