| Mar ’15 |
| 5 |
| 7:00 pm |
The elegies and illustrations in Asian American poet W. Todd Kaneko’s collection The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor, November 2014) cover themes of loss, love, regret, redemption, and remorse. Kaneko’s poems and illustrations blend Charles Bukowski’s raw-boned verse and Randy “Macho Man” Savage’s devastating elbow drop to mine the history of professional wrestling and examine complex relationships between fathers and sons.
“Kaneko’s poems leap from the top turnbuckle and make the heart pirouette like the choreographed turn of the ropes. When the lights in the arenas go out, these poems, in conjunction with Kaneko’s stunning visual work, honor both these wrestlers and an era. Through Todd Kaneko’s fierce but tender elegies, we come to understand that the gods are mortal after all.”
—Oliver de la Paz, author of Post Subject: A Fable and Requiem for the Orchard
W. Todd Kaneko’s poetry, fiction and non-fiction can be seen in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, Southeast Review, Lantern Review, NANO Fiction, The Collagist, Blackbird, The Huffington Post, Song of the Owashtanong: Grand Rapids Poetry in the 21st Century, Bring the Noise: The Best Pop Culture Essays from Barrelhouse Magazineand elsewhere. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and has received fellowships from the Kenyon ReviewWriters Workshop and Kundiman. He is an associate editor for DMQ Review. Currently, he teaches in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with the writer Caitlin Horrocks.
For more info: Visit curbsidesplendor.com or email Catherine(at)curbsidesplendor(dot).com
Thursday, March 5th, 7pm – Free Event
