Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Hybrid Genre. FREE BOAT: COLLECTED LIES AND LOVE POEMS selects from a sequence of sonnets written from 2008-2015. Reed, the author of five previous books (three novels and two stunts) lends his voice and eclectic abilities to this singular work, which, in addition to being a book of sonnets, is part love letter, part literary ode, and part delusion.

Evolving the classical sonnet, a form which still captures our spirits, Reed summons our contemporary yearning: sugar sweet to splash of acid. Come to me, writes Reed in sonnet #6, like tomorrow to a child. Sonnet #41, in contrast, offers the lyrical confession, All I want to do is stab people. With his plaintive lines, Reed gives expression to the inner ghost of the Twenty-First Century; sonnet #65, a valentine, wonders Momma, are there other wooden children?

FREE BOAT: COLLECTED LIES AND LOVE POEMS spans 54+ sonnets, and that's a lot of sonnets, but Reed's stylistic ease guides his audience through an experience more akin to reading a photo essay. Indeed, of the 23 images in FREE BOAT: COLLECTED LIES AND LOVE POEMS, 9 are photographs by the author. Rhapsody, serenade, picaresque, FREE BOAT would be as comfortably tabled with Nadja by André Breton, as it would be with The Dream Songs by John Berryman, Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin, or Under the Net by Iris Murdoch.