Everything is Ephemera

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