Thomas Fink

Maya Diablo Mason

""A Pageant For Every Addiction takes its title from "A Few Promises," the last poem in the book. The phrase is but one of many promises in that tour de force distribution poem. Two other long poems anchor the book: "First Date Questions," the engaging opener, plays with naiveté as sophistication, or vice versa ("Can a pregnant woman drive 'solo' in the HOV lane?") & ("What color is nothing?"). And the free-spirited textural epic in the middle of the book, "Substitute Fossil" ("Can we force against these entropies a grunting glob of allegation?") & ("Let all our neurotics know that we shall joust with them to oppose agony. And let every prankster know that this heretic tends to remain the bane of its own houseplant.")! These three poems in themselves are enough book to satisfy this reader, but they are joined by a trove of enigmatic, probing short works whose unpredictable word choices challenge the logic of lyrical intention. As collaboration, the poems are seamlessly fused, never feeling like the back and forth between radically different sensibilities. Charmingly hilarious, studiously off-beat, brightly questioning, Tom Fink and Maya Mason's "pageant" is suffused with a literate pleasure whose engine keeps generating more pleasure."--Geoffrey Young"--

Maya Diablo Mason

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