Fear of Description
Fear of Description by Daniel Poppick, published by Penguin Publishing Group on May 28, 2020, is a collection of 80 pages written in narrative prose poems. This work chronicles a group of friends navigating the complexities of 21st-century adulthood, capturing the essence of a generation grappling with its ideals and anxieties about the future. The poems delve into themes of crisis, employment uncertainty, and the interplay between personal and collective experiences, all while maintaining a distinctive narrative style.
Readers will find a rich exploration of the emotional landscape that defines contemporary life, as Poppick’s writing oscillates between elegiac reflections and autobiographical narratives. The collection addresses the tension between grief and friendship, artifice and technology, and the search for joy amid darkness. Through vivid imagery and a nonlinear narrative, Fear of Description examines the struggles of finding one’s place in a world fraught with challenges, offering insights into the complexities of youth and the haunting nature of memory.
Official synopsis Publisher
Told in woozy, narrative prose poems, the award-winning chronicle of a group of friends stumbling their way into 21st-century adulthood
‘Genius . . . Keatsian in density and bloom’ Brenda Shaughnessy
‘Poppick represents a slice of his generation . . . he lets himself delight in verbal unpredictability, when figures of speech jump out, or sparkle and shine’ The New York Times Book Review
These poems tell the story of a generation in crisis: at odds with its own ideals, precariously (or just un-) employed, and absolutely terrified of seeing itself in the planet’s future. Is our contemporary moment pure tragedy, or a dark joke? Can it be both?
Ranging between elegiac lyrics and autobiographical accounts of a group of poets moving from Iowa to Brooklyn in the years before and after the 2016 election, Fear of Description reinvigorates the prose poem, exploring the slippery terrain between grief and friendship, artifice and technology, writing and ritual, hauntings and obsessions – searching for joy in art but instead finding it in pitch darkness.
As the narrative cuts back and forth in time and circles around itself, the stories which begin to emerge in this remarkable book – of precarious employment, dead dogs speaking through Ouija boards and youthful brilliance cut short – explore at once the struggle to find one’s place in the world, and the fear of being trapped once there.
‘Through Poppick’s memories we relive that brief window of youth when friendship is the magic audience that grounds us’ Jennifer Moxley
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