See Me Improving

By Travis Nichols

Travis Nichols is a young poet and novelist who invites readers into a world of relationships gone strange. In his poems, everyday human behaviors become fraught with extraordinary significance. It's a delicate balance of orchestration and improvisation--both dizzying and oddly comforting. The poems, thick with vibrant language and semantic play, hint at a Rimbaudian derangement of the senses while being hyper-alert and completely alive. All my life I've felt destined not for the greatness of my heroes but the goodness of their followers. I knew, even when I found a piece of tooth in my Sausage McMuffin, I would surmount the poverty and dullness of my youth. I knew neither my poverty nor my youth would be significant enough to attract attention, only simple enough to graft onto the great biographies. Even when I felt uncommon and angry enough to steal balloons from the drug store and spit red paintballs through a peashooter at people making out in the park I knew I was no Billy the Kid . . . Travis Nichols is an editor at the Poetry Foundation. He is the author of Iowa , a collection of poems, and Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder (Coffee House Press), a novel. He edits the online magazine Weird Deer and regularly contributes to The Believer , Paste , and The Stranger . He lives in Chicago.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556593120
• ISBN13: 9781556593123
• Release Date: December 2010
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.9" x 8.8"