Books | charlesspringer

“There is a way of talking about what is real, exactly as it is, so to make it seem implausible, and this without relying on dreams or surrealism, symbols and myths. It’s a very narrow path and few poets walk it, but Charley Springer is one. The book’s title underscores how unlikely it is, the strangeness of our situation, this having come here from nowhere, out of nothing. In the opening poem, “Day at the Beach,” a truck spills beach balls into the loose nebula of redwing flocks and traffic, and the collection, as arresting as it is free and playful, expands like a miniscule cosmos from there. I loved this book; I admire this poet. His remarkable knack for the prose poem—such a sense for endings, such an ear—is the dark matter that bonds together all of our orbiting, crashing, seemingly separate worlds.”

– David Keplinger, author of

The World to Come

"Charles Springer’s Nowhere Now Here transports its readers on splendid carnival rides from the moon to the middle of nowhere and then ever so gently back home again."

– David Shumate, author of

Table Scraps, Kimonos in the Closet, The Floating Bridge: Prose Poems and High Water Mark: Prose Poems

NOWHERE

NOW HERE

A collection of
PROSE POEMS
published by Radial Books
2021

In the tradition of great prose poem collections by James Tate and Russell Edson, Charles Springer creates here an absurd world filled with engaging characters and unpredictable events. His prose poems are delightful streams of consciousness, inviting the reader to enter a surreal setting where reality is turned on its head. His poem “About Faces” opens with “Ted and Alice keep a closet full of faces. They hang on little hangers next to shirts and trousers.” It is a masterful poem offering an elaborate play on words. There are plenty of twists and turns, as in “Pine Tale,” with a hardwood floor “remembering about its early years” and wondering what had become of its fellow timbers. Sometimes the absurdity can break your heart, as in “Sent from Above,” with its poignant last line “the crow was right there behind him.” In “Middling,” Springer turns the adjective into a verb and a reason for being; while the dialogue in “The Race” reminds me of a scene from Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot. The poems are divided into six sections, set off with pithy ironic headings such as this: “John’s sense of wonder became heightened at the Museum of Ordinary Things.” In Nowhere Now Here, you don’t always know where you’re going, but it’s sure to be a fun ride.

– Gene Twaronite, Poet and author of the poetry collections Trash Picker on Mars and The Museum of Unwearable Shoes (Kelsay Books)

Reading Charles Springer’s collection of poems, JUICE, is like getting on a roller coaster, flying down the hill at break-neck speed, then going airborne, flying off the tracks only to land in a field of sunflowers and lilacs, unscathed and delicious all at once. His work has that kind of energy and that kind of sensitivity. He’s a poet of the earth, of the sky, of the everyday. This is what is so engaging about these poems, why I appreciate them so much—he’s not preaching, he’s not toying with us, he’s just dabbling in the everyday and making its beauty stand up and be noticed. He writes about knees, about dementia; he writes about houses and milk and New Jersey! When you read Springer’s work you are reading a celebration of the minimal that, eventually, gets you to maximal—that big open place where the metaphorical heart dances and sings, and where the physical heart gets stronger and stronger. Juice is a book full of electricity and pulp, sweetness and strength. It’s a collection of poems that should be on every bookshelf, sitting there strong, spine out, right between the cookbook and The Bible.

MATTHEW LIPPMAN - Author of

A Little Gut Magic and

Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful

JUICE
A collection of poems
magically real and really magical
about American life

published by
Regal House Publishing
2019

Charley’s JUICE takes you to a world that is so real it's fake, so fake it's real, and so fantastical you can't figure out if you are coming or going. Deep sadness mingles with slapstick and everyone is getting up and going to work in the underbelly of Heaven. JUICE is a magical joyride on a spaceship made of dust and stars, cobwebs and takeout boxes, fenders and a little hay that shoots us straight to a carnival of hyperrealism, where the side show is a mirror into our souls. Look in. You may think the mirror is warped, but let me tell you, it's not. Read JUICE and read America in all its rusty, neon, prairied, and salt-stained glory.

REBECCA KINZIE-BASTIAN - Author of Charms for Finding

Charles Springer's JUICE gives local reports from poetic precincts at once outlandish and ordinary. "By the time the news team got there, / it was way too late," Springer writes; his poems rove through the aftermath with giddy tenderness for the people and phrases of an America that is continually finding itself. These poems are as hospitable as "warm words / over the burn barrel." They help it emerge. An immensely delightful, exhilarating collection.

ZACH SAVICH - Author of

The Orchard Green and Every Color and Daybed

The prose poem,

"Masters Right Next Door"

first appeared in

Pond 47, February 2019 issue

of Spank the Carp

and now appears in

SPANK the CARP,

2019 Anthology

available on their website.

The poem entitled,

"The Resonance in Magnetic"

appears in the anthology,

Featured Readers 2019,

Moonstone Arts Center

compiled, edited and available

from Moonstone Press.

The poem is from JUICE,

courtesy of Regal House Publishing.

Two new prose poems,

"Check Up or Check Out"

and "Pine Tale"

appear in

Streetlight Magazine

2019 Anthology,

available on Amazon.

The prose poem entitled,

"To the Shoes"