by Forrest Rapier (Author)
As the Den Burns is a debut collection that renders a sublime world on the verge of vanishing. Elegiac and surreal, primal and lyrical, these unpredictable poems vault from Tallahassee vigils to flooded gardens after a hurricane's landfall. Reading this collection is like swimming into the ocean; you float weightless amid waves of resistance, then knots form in your gut because something unseen moves beneath you. Mythology and song collide in this stunning collection as unruly poems waver from lifeguard chairs and cathedrals to lamps in underwater caverns. Rapier's poetry could be spray painted beneath a beach pier; every stanza shifts rapidly without apology, the shape of the words like a signature.
Author Biography
FORREST RAPIER has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Cold Mountain Review, Levee, and Rabid Oak, among many others. He has received fellowships from Looking Glass Falls, Sewanee Writers Conference, and has held writing residencies at the University of Virginia and Brevard College. He recently received his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he now lives and hikes the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains.