Contemplative Man by Brock Guthrie

Contemplative Man by Brock Guthrie
ISBN: 978-1-937420-67-3
Release Date: March 14, 2014

You could be sitting on a good one, a two-to-eight word answer that says exactly how important Guthrie’s Contemplative Man is. Something concise. Something direct. Something that proves a summary actually can say something true about something else. You think, damn, this sounds smug, and you think maybe these poems are, too. This is the part where you buy the book and see for yourself.

Mark Halliday, author of Keep This Forever says, "I doubt that any other first book has ever been this funny and candid and wise all at once. Brock Guthrie's territory is bone-deep bafflement as lived by young men who know that their strategic responses (alcohol, risk-taking, bellicosity, deadpan hard-edge irony, hilarity) to tedium and confusing desire won't bring enough understanding or freedom. The wonderful rare comedy of Guthrie's work flows from defiant persistence in a world that feels rigged against individual dignity. Fortunately, dignity and encouragement do result from poetry so extremely unpretentious and so cool-eyed."