A Kellogg Press book.
An online book release reading, due to COVID-19.
ArtsConnect Local Color
Everything is Ephemera is a collection of introspections catalogued by time and place I’d file under ‘must-read’ for any student or teacher of poetry and parent alike. Dennis reminds me that the phases of student to teacher to colleague are cyclical and don’t only occur in academia.
-Huascar Medina, Poet Laureate of Kansas (2019-2021),
Un Mango Grows In Kansas
Everything Is Ephemera is a book about education, in three parts—childhood, college, fatherhood. Dennis Etzel, Jr., understands that who you were is also who you are. He is still the boy copying dictionary words for a teacher who meant “for words to be punishments.” These poems have no periods, no borders. He has traded his dictionary for a thesaurus, and he writes to “reshape hallways into exits.” Everything is ephemera, true; moments and poems slip from our grasp. But the collection of moments becomes a whole life, and words from forgotten poems find their way into new ones, which find their way into unforgettable collections like this one.
-Melissa Fite Johnson, A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky
In one poem the fifth-grade teacher orders her student into the hall to copy pages from the dictionary, “words…punishments,” but Etzel turns words into joy, into magic, into redemption through these poems, these pages, which include meditations on a childhood of science fiction movies, Dungeons & Dragons, comic books, and the kind of quiet observation
and reflection that lead to early wisdom.
-Kevin Rabas, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-2019,
Watch Your Head
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Two Ponders: a collaboration
Dennis Etzel, Jr, poet, and Barbara Waterman-Peters, painter, worked on a project centered around Gage Park Pond in Topeka, Kansas, exploring the past, present and future of water and our responsibility for its care.
An article about our release in NOTO.
The exhibition will be coming soon in other spaces.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Fast-Food Sonnets
Coal City Review Press: Fast-Food Sonnets
A 2017 Kansas Notable Book
"Reflecting on his own experience in the industry, his poems offer by turns compassionate, cutting and humorous insights into human resilience amid often callously dehumanizing conditions. His poems are a highly articulate witness and tribute to the ultimate triumph of human worth and dignity."
--Rev. Tobias J.H. Schlingensiepen
$10
Brian Daldorph, editor
Cover art by Aldrick Scott
[
Closing the Store on Summer Nights
The closing hour turns to cleaning, turns to
leaving at two in the morning, as night
employees stretch out on the grass, beside
their parked cars, as the automatic lights
shut off, like they are told to do, commands
given by the manager. Each body
turns to the stars, each wish to find a way
out of this job. The hands that touched burgers,
that wrapped wrappers and fixed cold drinks now smell
of grease and French fries, now dig to replace
these gross scents with grass and flower petals,
fingers pushing deeper into the earth.
[
Acknowledgements
With thanks to the following editors:
Brian Daldorph of Coal City Review:
"Working Drive-Thru," "Small fry," “Closing the store on summer nights,” “Buddy,” “T-Bone,” and “To Charlie Brown”
Amy Fleury of Inscape:
“The Poet-Cook”
Matt Porubsky of seveneightfive:
“Cleaning the Flat Grill,” “Being fired,” and “from the index to the Manager's Manual”
Mickey Cesar and Katie Longofono of Blue Island Review:
“Burning in the Lake of Fryer,” “Dressing the cheeseburger buns,” and “Waste”
Katie Longofono and Mary Stone of Blue Island Review:
“Birdy the Early Bird” and “Grimace”
Kevin Rabas of Flint Hills Review:
“Camouflage” and “Toying”
[
"Instead of relying upon a small, stable, well-paid, and well-trained workforce, the fast food industry seeks out part-time, unskilled workers who are willing to accept low pay. Teenagers have been the perfect candidates for these jobs, not only because they are less expensive to hire than adults, but also because their youthful inexperience makes them easier to control."
—from Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
[
"Fast-Food Sonnets. At first this oxymoronic title stymied me, but Dennis Etzel, Jr’s mix of pop culture and high Italian Renaissance is spot on. Etzel’s verse is not strict sonnets, but each packs maximum emotion into spare lines. He tells about poverty-level coming of age through initiation at the local hamburger joint. A manager tells a new employee “to wear her hair up, be ready to serve.” This ending line is a chilling indictment of the class system, gender roles, and servitude. This book is an important satire for the 21st century. It also is a perfect blend of drama and passion."
--Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09 and author of Mélange Block
"Oh, how I wish Dennis Etzel Jr.'s Fast-Food Sonnets would have been issued to me along with my blue uniform and visor back when I, too, was in the McArmy. I might have been aware of the beauty and breaking all around me as I fried and scooped and salted. But what a pleasure, so many years later, to remember life on that side of the counter. For anyone who has ever been there, or for anyone in danger of forgetting that a person in a uniform is a person, Etzel's poems are compassionate and thoughtful reminders. Plus he cracks me up."
--Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone
"In these well-crafted poems, Dennis Etzel, Jr. lays bare the truths known by those who’ve labored in the fast-food industry. He deftly illustrates what tolls the turbo delivery of food exacts from young people— for whom it is often first employment. Those smiling faces, who query “May I help you,” hold back the question “Will you help me?” Each poem leaves the reader more aware that the cost of fast-food does not include what has been paid in misery."
--Annette Billings, Descants for a Daughter
"Teen Dennis turns the microscope on working a Fast Food Job: its absurdities, its drudgeries, its injustices. In doing so he reveals something at the heart of our Supersize culture: a loss of heart, a loss of connection with what we eat. Unofficial referee of this world, the poet reveals what's wrong, what must change, and like cutting a hole in a saguaro, Dennis cuts into the prickly trauma of his teen, fast-food-worker life, and brings forth water, spirit, healing."
--Kevin Rabas, Songs for My Father
A 2017 Kansas Notable Book
"Reflecting on his own experience in the industry, his poems offer by turns compassionate, cutting and humorous insights into human resilience amid often callously dehumanizing conditions. His poems are a highly articulate witness and tribute to the ultimate triumph of human worth and dignity."
--Rev. Tobias J.H. Schlingensiepen
$10
Brian Daldorph, editor
Cover art by Aldrick Scott
[
Closing the Store on Summer Nights
The closing hour turns to cleaning, turns to
leaving at two in the morning, as night
employees stretch out on the grass, beside
their parked cars, as the automatic lights
shut off, like they are told to do, commands
given by the manager. Each body
turns to the stars, each wish to find a way
out of this job. The hands that touched burgers,
that wrapped wrappers and fixed cold drinks now smell
of grease and French fries, now dig to replace
these gross scents with grass and flower petals,
fingers pushing deeper into the earth.
[
Acknowledgements
With thanks to the following editors:
Brian Daldorph of Coal City Review:
"Working Drive-Thru," "Small fry," “Closing the store on summer nights,” “Buddy,” “T-Bone,” and “To Charlie Brown”
Amy Fleury of Inscape:
“The Poet-Cook”
Matt Porubsky of seveneightfive:
“Cleaning the Flat Grill,” “Being fired,” and “from the index to the Manager's Manual”
Mickey Cesar and Katie Longofono of Blue Island Review:
“Burning in the Lake of Fryer,” “Dressing the cheeseburger buns,” and “Waste”
Katie Longofono and Mary Stone of Blue Island Review:
“Birdy the Early Bird” and “Grimace”
Kevin Rabas of Flint Hills Review:
“Camouflage” and “Toying”
[
"Instead of relying upon a small, stable, well-paid, and well-trained workforce, the fast food industry seeks out part-time, unskilled workers who are willing to accept low pay. Teenagers have been the perfect candidates for these jobs, not only because they are less expensive to hire than adults, but also because their youthful inexperience makes them easier to control."
—from Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
[
"Fast-Food Sonnets. At first this oxymoronic title stymied me, but Dennis Etzel, Jr’s mix of pop culture and high Italian Renaissance is spot on. Etzel’s verse is not strict sonnets, but each packs maximum emotion into spare lines. He tells about poverty-level coming of age through initiation at the local hamburger joint. A manager tells a new employee “to wear her hair up, be ready to serve.” This ending line is a chilling indictment of the class system, gender roles, and servitude. This book is an important satire for the 21st century. It also is a perfect blend of drama and passion."
--Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09 and author of Mélange Block
"Oh, how I wish Dennis Etzel Jr.'s Fast-Food Sonnets would have been issued to me along with my blue uniform and visor back when I, too, was in the McArmy. I might have been aware of the beauty and breaking all around me as I fried and scooped and salted. But what a pleasure, so many years later, to remember life on that side of the counter. For anyone who has ever been there, or for anyone in danger of forgetting that a person in a uniform is a person, Etzel's poems are compassionate and thoughtful reminders. Plus he cracks me up."
--Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone
"In these well-crafted poems, Dennis Etzel, Jr. lays bare the truths known by those who’ve labored in the fast-food industry. He deftly illustrates what tolls the turbo delivery of food exacts from young people— for whom it is often first employment. Those smiling faces, who query “May I help you,” hold back the question “Will you help me?” Each poem leaves the reader more aware that the cost of fast-food does not include what has been paid in misery."
--Annette Billings, Descants for a Daughter
"Teen Dennis turns the microscope on working a Fast Food Job: its absurdities, its drudgeries, its injustices. In doing so he reveals something at the heart of our Supersize culture: a loss of heart, a loss of connection with what we eat. Unofficial referee of this world, the poet reveals what's wrong, what must change, and like cutting a hole in a saguaro, Dennis cuts into the prickly trauma of his teen, fast-food-worker life, and brings forth water, spirit, healing."
--Kevin Rabas, Songs for My Father
My Grunge of 1991
My Grunge of 1991
From BlazeVOX Books!
Dennis Etzel Jr.'s precise prose poetry examines injustice, Star Trek, George Bush's oft-ridiculous internal monologue, and a vague, nebulous past. Didacticism is just another device in My Grunge of 1991, one that makes technical yet poetic points about feminism and the nature of utopia. Etzel also challenges the idea of pure art, instead using his meanders to promote a utopia to be striven for. But "Does the Reader know the Watcher is watching him read as he reads about the Watcher? " Tune in to accompany Etzel as he interrogates our surveillance state.
--Amy King, The Missing Museum
Like the smart, My Secret Wars of 1984, Dennis Etzel Jr.'s My Grunge of 1991 sings with intensity. Collaging pop culture, feminist scholarship, and politics from that year, these prose poems question. Etzel asks, You doubt my honor as a warrior? and Who made my home a McHome? If in Fast-Food Sonnets, Etzel explores the meaning of customer service work, here Etzel turns the focus to the ways culture works on the self. Reading this new collection is a lovely disorientating echo of dictions that transport. Like a Kansas tornado with its resonating swirl, readers of My Grunge of 1991 land among Happy Meals, Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, and Desert Storm coverage. In the muzak, grunge stars Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana voice and scream. With lines arranged alphabetically across 75 poems, My Grunge of 1991 offers a sound answer to Dana Gioia’s 1991 question, Can Poetry Matter? With a poet’s ear like Etzel, it can.
--Laura Madeline Wiseman, Through a Certain Forest
Within the poem, “a list of alphabetized semblances for keeping track of occurrences out of post-trauma,” the speaker negotiates a way between quotations. Even pre-9/11, “we [were] no longer safe,” so he cloaks himself in “Grunge music, comic books, and Star Trek.” Amidst the dystopia of the First Gulf War, Dennis Etzel, Jr. brilliantly imagines a utopia where “there are no boy or girl Happy Meal toys – only Hot Wheels or Barbie.” In other words, this absorbing prose-poem sequence is an inoculation against – and hope for – the present.
--Joseph Harrington, Of Some Sky
In My Grunge of 1991, the mix is all: the combo of high and low, public and private, your life & her life & theirs, all at once, an intersectionality of those bold prosperous times (for some) and the madness below and in between—of a Bush war, a Happy Meal land filled with “boy” and “girl” toys: Hotwheels, Barbies. Both clever and tender-hearted (and “woke”), this collection allows a steady gaze at what the early ‘90s and Dennis have wrought.
--Kevin Rabas, Songs for My Father, KS Poet Laureate, 2017-19.
From BlazeVOX Books!
Dennis Etzel Jr.'s precise prose poetry examines injustice, Star Trek, George Bush's oft-ridiculous internal monologue, and a vague, nebulous past. Didacticism is just another device in My Grunge of 1991, one that makes technical yet poetic points about feminism and the nature of utopia. Etzel also challenges the idea of pure art, instead using his meanders to promote a utopia to be striven for. But "Does the Reader know the Watcher is watching him read as he reads about the Watcher? " Tune in to accompany Etzel as he interrogates our surveillance state.
--Amy King, The Missing Museum
Like the smart, My Secret Wars of 1984, Dennis Etzel Jr.'s My Grunge of 1991 sings with intensity. Collaging pop culture, feminist scholarship, and politics from that year, these prose poems question. Etzel asks, You doubt my honor as a warrior? and Who made my home a McHome? If in Fast-Food Sonnets, Etzel explores the meaning of customer service work, here Etzel turns the focus to the ways culture works on the self. Reading this new collection is a lovely disorientating echo of dictions that transport. Like a Kansas tornado with its resonating swirl, readers of My Grunge of 1991 land among Happy Meals, Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, and Desert Storm coverage. In the muzak, grunge stars Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana voice and scream. With lines arranged alphabetically across 75 poems, My Grunge of 1991 offers a sound answer to Dana Gioia’s 1991 question, Can Poetry Matter? With a poet’s ear like Etzel, it can.
--Laura Madeline Wiseman, Through a Certain Forest
Within the poem, “a list of alphabetized semblances for keeping track of occurrences out of post-trauma,” the speaker negotiates a way between quotations. Even pre-9/11, “we [were] no longer safe,” so he cloaks himself in “Grunge music, comic books, and Star Trek.” Amidst the dystopia of the First Gulf War, Dennis Etzel, Jr. brilliantly imagines a utopia where “there are no boy or girl Happy Meal toys – only Hot Wheels or Barbie.” In other words, this absorbing prose-poem sequence is an inoculation against – and hope for – the present.
--Joseph Harrington, Of Some Sky
In My Grunge of 1991, the mix is all: the combo of high and low, public and private, your life & her life & theirs, all at once, an intersectionality of those bold prosperous times (for some) and the madness below and in between—of a Bush war, a Happy Meal land filled with “boy” and “girl” toys: Hotwheels, Barbies. Both clever and tender-hearted (and “woke”), this collection allows a steady gaze at what the early ‘90s and Dennis have wrought.
--Kevin Rabas, Songs for My Father, KS Poet Laureate, 2017-19.
My Secret Wars of 1984
My Secret Wars of 1984
In its entirety, My Secret Wars of 1984 is an alphabetized 366-sentence conceptual poetry-memoir collage, using texts from the year 1984 (Lyn Hejinian, Ronald Johnson, bell hooks, Marvel Comics, Dungeons & Dragons, President Reagan, etc.) with sentences of my own—within the context of political and personal struggles of that time (my mother coming out in the midst of living in a conservative neighborhood, the threat of nuclear war, the recession, etc.).
From BlazeVOX Books! Please support Small Press Distribution by ordering your copy here.
Links:
Kansas City Star's Top Ten in Poetry for 2015
One of seven books to read this fall and winter (2015)
The Volta Blog Book Review
Acknowledgements for My Secret Wars of 1984
A finalist of the 2012 1913 Press First Book Award, chosen by Rae Armantrout
A finalist of the 2013 SpringGun Press Open Manuscript
Reading
A semi-finalist of the 2013 Subito Press Poetry Contest
Poems have appeared in:
3:AM Dec 2011
1913: A Journal of Forms #6
BlazeVOX Winter 2012
DIAGRAM #12.4, 2012
Flint Hills Review 2011
Fact-Simile #8 2012
Horse Less Review #16 Winter 2014
The Laurel Review #46.2 Summer 2013
Posit #3, Fall 2014
Rethink Topeka 2012 Chapbook
SpringGun Journal #9 2014
Tarpaulin Sky August 2013
Discussion QuestionsIn its entirety, My Secret Wars of 1984 is an alphabetized 366-sentence conceptual poetry-memoir collage, using texts from the year 1984 (Lyn Hejinian, Ronald Johnson, bell hooks, Marvel Comics, Dungeons & Dragons, President Reagan, etc.) with sentences of my own—within the context of political and personal struggles of that time (my mother coming out in the midst of living in a conservative neighborhood, the threat of nuclear war, the recession, etc.).
From BlazeVOX Books! Please support Small Press Distribution by ordering your copy here.
Links:
Kansas City Star's Top Ten in Poetry for 2015
One of seven books to read this fall and winter (2015)
The Volta Blog Book Review
Acknowledgements for My Secret Wars of 1984
A finalist of the 2012 1913 Press First Book Award, chosen by Rae Armantrout
A finalist of the 2013 SpringGun Press Open Manuscript
Reading
A semi-finalist of the 2013 Subito Press Poetry Contest
Poems have appeared in:
3:AM Dec 2011
1913: A Journal of Forms #6
BlazeVOX Winter 2012
DIAGRAM #12.4, 2012
Flint Hills Review 2011
Fact-Simile #8 2012
Horse Less Review #16 Winter 2014
The Laurel Review #46.2 Summer 2013
Posit #3, Fall 2014
Rethink Topeka 2012 Chapbook
SpringGun Journal #9 2014
Tarpaulin Sky August 2013
My Secret Wars of 1984 concentrates on events that occurred in 1984. Whether you were alive to remember 1984 or not, how effective are the borrowed texts and events throughout the book in recreating that time?
How does the history of 1984 reflect what is happening now, found in My Secret Wars of 1984?
What kind of themes do you see in My Secret Wars of 1984? Maybe examine a few chosen poems to explore possible themes?
How do the placements of different sentences next to each other create tension? How do they create unification or flow?
What other books remind you of My Secret Wars of 1984? In what ways?
What kind of voice does the overall tone, style, etc. reflect?
How is My Secret Wars of 1984 an example of plurality?
Who would you recommend My Secret Wars of 1984 to? Why?
[
To read My Secret Wars of 1984 is to ride an old wooden rollercoaster through a spacious gallery of stained-glass windows, all their colorful shards having been stolen, shattered, then chewed into shape: what we have here are gorgeous and wise assemblages of sharp, scavenged graffiti. Ricocheting from Pac-Man to Topeka to institutional structures to AIDS awareness to Reagan, Dennis Etzel, Jr. masters the skills of fragmentation and disharmony without losing one bit of torque. Sharpen your political acumen on this poetry-memoir of the highest order—and discover much pleasure in the process.
—Amy King, author of The Missing Museum
The sentence inscribes a trauma, bumps over a secret, and accretes toward continuance, which is life. In My Secret Wars of 1984, Dennis Etzel, Jr. constructs little sentence survival packets, brimming with Reaganite Cold War fear and the inescapable “I am” of a teenage boy in a threatening world. Our Superhero of Fragility threads these lines with tenderness, wit, and humor, and comes out the other side more whole than before.
—Allison Cobb, author of Green-Wood
The world of 1984 has a deft tenacity in the hands of Dennis Etzel, Jr. This book blends the personal to the greater political as only the best possible memoir can do. We are all in this world together and the strangest things occur, sometimes when other strange things occur, and I thank Mr. Etzel for his brilliant, sharp reminder.
—CAConrad, author of ECODEVIANCE
Dennis Etzel, Jr.’s My Secret Wars of 1984 documents a year in which the young poet was surrounded by the apocalyptic millennialism of the Reagan administration at the same time that his mother was coming out in conservative Topeka, Kansas. Etzel’s masterful merging of the personal and political is matched by an equally vital attention to the politics of poetic form. Unfolding in wildly appropriative, politically astute prose poems totaling 366 sentences—one for every day of that leap year—this book offers a moving account of a young boy’s effort to find a new language for public and private worlds constantly under threat of extinction.
—Tony Trigilio, author of The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood)
Some years brand our history: 1861, 1968, 2001; others are best known as fictions, like 1984, made famous by George Orwell in the real year of 1949. In prose poem boxes, with sentences arranged alphabetically, the confinement of these years is enacted and challenged. Using sources that include Orwell's novel and Lyn Hejinian's "Rejection of Closure" (another artifact of the 1980s), Etzel re-constructs the era and proposes some ways out, foremost among them feminism. Using the language of that era, Etzel pries opens its boxes of secrets.
—Susan M. Schultz, author of Dementia Blog, vols. 1 & 2 and Memory Cards: 2011-2012 Series (Singing Horse Press)
Robinson Middle Sham
Robinson Middle Sham (An Actual Kansas Press, 2015)
On June 8, 2015, Dennis Etzel, Jr. and other poets took a psychogeographic drift (see Kaia Sand, Allison Cobb, Jena Osman) around Robinson Middle School. This hybrid collection of poem and history--against our [continued] racist, sexist, homophobic, and Patriarchal culture--serves as an act of voice and empowerment.
On June 8, 2015, Dennis Etzel, Jr. and other poets took a psychogeographic drift (see Kaia Sand, Allison Cobb, Jena Osman) around Robinson Middle School. This hybrid collection of poem and history--against our [continued] racist, sexist, homophobic, and Patriarchal culture--serves as an act of voice and empowerment.
My Graphic Novel
About My Graphic Novel:
Poems about the Vietnam War, comic books, a father and a son, intergenerational PTSD, and forgiveness. "Here is the soldier who brought the war home inside him, the boy who strives to locate his father’s heart inside all that frightening noise, the boy who draws stories with himself as superhero, with a twist. Dennis Etzel, Jr.’s new poems are spare, lance-sharp probes of the battle within, its reflection in the world we inhabit, and the world we create."
[
from My Graphic Novel
Curled over for the walk back
home through the blizzard, my pages
touch the landscape until, hooked
by the wind, they detach
from my staples. My story
is visible, if someone would
reassemble us.
[
[panel one] With his comic book artwork, Bill Sienkiewicz saved the world every Friday.
[panel two] My thoughts were stuck in a gutter between panels.
[panel three] Inside.
[panel four] Somewhere, a penciler penciled an exploding wall.
[panel five] An inker inked over the debris adding details.
[panel six] The colorist colored the center with red and yellow.
[panel seven] I stared at the artwork until a flash of red and yellow hit me.
[last panel] The explosion knocked me clear.
Poems about the Vietnam War, comic books, a father and a son, intergenerational PTSD, and forgiveness. "Here is the soldier who brought the war home inside him, the boy who strives to locate his father’s heart inside all that frightening noise, the boy who draws stories with himself as superhero, with a twist. Dennis Etzel, Jr.’s new poems are spare, lance-sharp probes of the battle within, its reflection in the world we inhabit, and the world we create."
[
from My Graphic Novel
Curled over for the walk back
home through the blizzard, my pages
touch the landscape until, hooked
by the wind, they detach
from my staples. My story
is visible, if someone would
reassemble us.
[
[panel one] With his comic book artwork, Bill Sienkiewicz saved the world every Friday.
[panel two] My thoughts were stuck in a gutter between panels.
[panel three] Inside.
[panel four] Somewhere, a penciler penciled an exploding wall.
[panel five] An inker inked over the debris adding details.
[panel six] The colorist colored the center with red and yellow.
[panel seven] I stared at the artwork until a flash of red and yellow hit me.
[last panel] The explosion knocked me clear.
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