Purpose and Devil Piss by Robert Siek

978-1-937420-50-5
Publication Date: October 8, 2013
7×10; Perfect-Bound Paperback; 84 Pages
Retail Price: $16.95

Purpose and Devil Piss, Robert Siek’s full-length poetry debut, is a collection that spans a decade of the poet’s life, relating experiences good and bad and exploring human interactions through scenes of domesticity, sexual debauchery, early mornings coming off drugs, family happenings, avoiding strangers on the street, dating, locker rooms and treadmills at the gym, neighbors’ comings and goings, and more.

"Robert Siek’s poems have this rich, layered dailiness about them that seems to both gobble up and perfectly attenuate everything he touches on, and he knows just how and where and what and who to touch. I’ve been his work’s dedicated reader and fan for ages, and, even so, the beauty, feeling, and tech on display in Purpose and Devil Piss has knocked me for a loop." — Dennis Cooper

"I applaud Robert Siek’s candor, his eschewal of embellishment, his hardscrabble rhythms, his documentary fidelity to everyday life’s seamy texture. Whether oriented toward erotic bliss or toward bummed-out isolation, he writes for survival’s sake. He makes poetry seem important again; unacknowledged legislator, he reinvents verse’s divine mandate. I feel at home in Siek’s universe, especially when his lines put out the welcome mat for sordid customers." — Wayne Koestenbaum

"If you enjoy poems that are fresh, fun, and fuckin’ fabulous, urine luck! Robert Siek’s Purpose and Devil Piss will leave you feeling just a little bit dirty and totally purified with his fearless word flow." –Emanuel Xavier