Literature

Disappearing, Inc. Brandon Amico, Author

Just before the recent launch of his debut collection of poems, Disappearing, Inc., Asheville’s Brandon Amico learned that he was among 35 recipients nationwide of a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.

The poems of Disappearing, Inc. speak to the sense of displacement that many people feel today in relation to where they are in their lives and where they thought they would or should be, Amico says. “Most of the poems came out of wondering how we develop our senses of self in the stimulusbombardment that is life in America in the early 21st century, with our lives saturated in noise and branding and social media and consumerism and shifting attitudes about the self and others and relationships.” Amico has taken the many manifestations of language in our daily lives—social media posts, press releases, headlines, phone notifications, internal monologues— and placed them, he says, “under the lens of poetry to see the way their sentences and word choices squirmed under the light, what they revealed when taken in a new context.”

Among his favorite poets are Solmaz Sharif, Louise Glück, Michael Bazzett and Karen Skolfield. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “Poetry right now is thriving with countless incredible voices.”

Disappearing, Inc., March, 2019, poetry, paperback, $15.95, by Brandon Amico, and published by Gold Wake Press, Boston, MA. Readings in April include an appearance at Asheville Wordfest (p. 16) and a reading on Thursday, April 18, at 6:30 p.m. at Firestorm Books. To learn more, visit BrandonAmico.com.

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