Loplop in a Red City

The poems in Kenneth Pobo's Loplop in a Red City spring from artworks old and new, figurative to abstract, Vincent Van Gogh to Leonora Carrington to Max Ernst. Like those works, the poems in Loplop are agonized and idyllic, uneasily at home in the surreal, animated, beautiful, and complex.Praise for Loplop in a Red City:[Kenneth Pobo] has long been a master of the short line free verse personal poem; in this collection, he's let the paintings charge his work with experimental verve and at times, a surreal edginess. The poems are exuberant, filled with daring imaginative leaps.... Loplop in a Red City is a testament to the power of art's ability to inspire. - J. Esch, Turk's Head ReviewThese wonderful poems go way beyond mere ekphrasis. They're little masterpieces in their own right, bursting with exuberant life from the page and into our memories without our having to know anything about the paintings that inspired them. - Robert Cooperman, author of In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains, winner of the Colorado Book Award for PoetryThere's no ego here; it's laid bare, without any ribbons or bows, and in that simplicity, somehow more complex than most.... Pobo's talents for finding the right words, his precision as an artist, sing from the canvas in this collection. - Jerrod Edson, author of The Moon Is RealLoplop in a Red City offers us a taste of super powers: Pobo's poems present lyrical, verbal play, and we also gain new insight into art, art history, and the painters who created the great works.... Pobo's poems will provide artistic companionship in the days and years ahead. - Marilyn Kallet, author of 17 books, including The Love That Moves MeThere are brilliant daubs of color here, moments where lyrical poems respond to art. Perhaps the concerns of painters are similar to those of poets: who am I, and what has this creative journey meant? - Patricia Clark, Professor and Poet in Residence at Grand Valley State University, author of My Father on a Bicycle and The Canopy