My Shabby Afterlife

"The only cure for life is life" writes Aaron Fischer in this gritty and rich collection of poems. Unique among baby boomers, he casts an un-nostalgic eye on his youth fifty years ago, mainly in hard-luck, sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll Brooklyn. His advice to those like him growing up with the same trouble is that it's possible to survive, even to find joy, but "you've got to be lucky." There's nothing shabby about the artistry of My Shabby Afterlife. In this poet's voice the sonnet and the sonnet sequence crackle with their original energy. Clearly Fischer's luck has been poetry itself. And we should feel lucky to have his.

- Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry (poetry) and Dailiness (essays)

My Shabby Afterlife uses form - sonnet and free verse - in powerful and original ways to construct the narrative of a life beginning with Jewish immigrant roots in New York, through a deep dive into sixties drug culture, rehab, marriage and children in New Jersey, and finally, the finding of the true self in literature and writing. These well-crafted and moving poems wrestle with the work necessary to reveal "the knots / trying to breathe through the paint," knowing that "the job of a song is to leave a scar." At bottom, they celebrate life, with vibrant homages to artists and musicians like Albrecht D?rer, Cha?m Soutine, The Beatles, Fats Waller, Howlin' Wolf, along with intensely personal appreciations written to lovers, friends, family, culture, and place. This is a book that will teach you much about the art of poetry at the same time that it heals your soul.

- Rebecca Foust, author of Paradise Drive, winner of the 2015 Four Way Books Prize, and ONLY, forthcoming from Four Way Books.

Aaron Fischer, in his remarkable book, My Shabby Afterlife, is the recording angel, not just of his life, but our own. Shabby, to be sure. Acted out under "half-hearted stars [blurred by smog]/ that offered neither solace nor redemption / that promised nothing and delivered it," these poems, many of them sonnets, which deserve the company of what he calls the Elizabethan poets, "ping-pong between belly laugh and terror, / scored to the iambic bite and the rasp of the spade." All our failings-personal, political, social-make their appearance here. Though America, The Binge, is over, this poet dares to see it and by his accurate eye love it and us back from the edge of a consequence none of us wants.

- Roger Mitchell, author of Lemon Peeled the Moment Before: New and Selected Poems and Reason's Dream