EBOOK
About
New Playlist holds a variety of poetic forms: odes, found, haiku, prose, list, collages, one-liners, sonnets, and more. With his trademark wit and inventiveness, David Trinidad "plays" with these forms as if they were toys. He creates a Wikipedia cento in which each line illustrates how little is known of sixty-five ancient Greek poets. He gives us an itinerary of "Things to Do" in ten 1970s disaster films. He catalogs Sylvia Plath's recipe cards and all the references to beer in a book by Bernadette Mayer. His subjects are as "fun" as his forms: pop singer Dusty Springfield, Marcel Proust, Bashō, Hollywood movies and actresses, old cartoons, a prom dress thief loose in a girls' dorm. But "play" does not preclude seriousness, as Trinidad addresses physical scars, encounters with homophobia, and the wonders and wounds of childhood.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"New Playlist will restore your faith in poetry. It puts the fun back into profundity. How? By combining conceptual cool with personal revelation, the bright surfaces of pop culture with interior reflections on memory and childhood. Creation merges with curation. Trinidad is a connoisseur of sublime delicacies such as pre-code Hollywood movies, fading pop stars, literary gossip, and other enticing
Elaine Equi, author of The Intangibles
"David Trinidad is a legend. For decades, while many have chased trends, Trinidad has amassed a body of work completely his own, and New Playlist is a wonderful addition to 'Trinidadian' poetics. In this poet's world, everything-Plath's recipes, Hollywood stars and gossip, underlined passages from a book-is transformed into poetry. His work turns me into a fangirl-Trinidad is my movie-star crush."
Aaron Smith, author of Stop Lying