This Sunday, Jan. 17, at 3 o’clock.  

Graham is the author of four full-fledged poetry collections: As in Every Deafness (Flood Editions, 2003), Leave the Room to Itself (Ahsahta Press, 2004), Necessary Stranger (Flood Editions, 2007), and newly, A Mouth in California (Flood Editions, 2009).

A few words from the publisher on Mouth…

“A Mouth in California, Graham Foust’s fourth book of poetry, uses the ironies and anxieties of contemporary life as a foil for mordant and sometimes violent humor. Through mangled aphorisms, misheard song lyrics, and off-key phrasing, Foust creates a unique idiom of tragicomic pratfalls, a ballet of falling down. Yet the elasticity of Foust’s language repels the stiff-necked adversaries of thought: “what’s the wrong way to break / that brick of truth back into music?”

I like it for its patient language. No less sophisticated than an exploding MacGyverism. Here’s a selection to show it’s true…

To the Writer

Another cloud spun to nothing, one
of nature’s more manageable kills.
Another borderline-meaningless morning save
for everything. You claim you kissed
a certain picture with such patience
you became it. So who hasn’t?
You’re of one long weary trouble;
you wear your hard mind on your hand.

Thus, your dumb touch, your clunky
fuss, your little millions. Your stomach
newly stuffed with amputations. Quiet
and furious dots of distant rooms—rooms,
I would add, through which you’ll never move
or sleep—begin to mean. In one of them,
humor, collapsed in a painful curl, an odd
head at the back of its throat. It’s what’s to bleed about.