Howie Good's new e-chap is all heart
You’d think with a full-length book just out, Howie Good would be resting on his laurels, but no. Blue Hour Press has just released his 11th chapbook, an e-book called My Heart Draws a Rough Map. As PDF books go, this is a real gem, with charming, full-color illustrations and great typography. It’s a collection of prose poems of the classic type, and Good demonstrates once again his mastery of dystopian surrealism. It is literally all heart, as the publisher’s blurb acknowledges.
Not content to just beat, the heart grieves, gives in to melancholy, takes long walks, plays baseball, makes demands like Edward G. Robinson. Drawn outside of the self, the heart doesn’t just get saddled with emotion, but is an observer, a conversationalist, enigmatic.
As with Charles Simic, many of Good’s lines have an aphoristic or oracular quality. Our favorites: “It’s perfect bombing weather,” “My heart rattled like a bottle of pills,” and “I huddle around the trash barrel with a jury of my peers.” Go read.
