Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales! Garrett Caples 9781950268979

In the grand tradition of poet's fiction, Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales! is a collection of nine phantasmagorical stories by beloved poet and City Lights editor, Garrett Caples.

Resolutely turning its back on the ethos of traditional narrative, Proses draws on Marcel Schwob, magical realism, and speculative fiction for inspiration, projecting worlds dominated by dream logic and impossible (and often hilarious) dimensions. Spectral nuns, xenobots, explosive phraseology, and even Ringo Starr are just some of the unexpected dilemmas confronting the various protagonists of Proses. Poets such as Andrew Joron, Kit Schluter, and Claude Grind of Verdoux Books, make cameo appearances-including, at times, Caples himself! While each story is a standalone, the collection amounts to an intricate whole, as themes, objects, and even characters recur, encouraging readers to enjoy the book sequentially. Regardless of how it is enjoyed, Proses is at once a satire of the world of contemporary poetry and publishing and a celebration of that world's fantastic and infinite imagination.

Garrett Caples is the author of Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales! (Wave Books 2024), Lovers of Today (Wave Books, 2021), Power Ballads (Wave Books, 2016), Complications (2007), and The Garrett Caples Reader (1999), a collection of outtakes, The Rise & Fall of Johnny Volume (2020), and a bilingual selection, Noches Apatridas (Unstated Nights, 2019). He's also written a book of essays, Retrievals (2014), and a pamphlet, Quintessence of the Minor (2010). He's the editor of Philip Lamantia's Preserving Fire: Selected Prose (2018). He is an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight Poetry Series. He has a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco.

"Garrett Caples's Power Ballads offers rhythmic insight into the youthful heyday of Generation X. Interspersing references to hip-hop culture, modernist poets, and classic rock legends, Caples uses his experience as an artistic insider to show us the rise of a new musical genre. In both free verse and prose poetry, the author delivers profound insights with lyrical prowess, using slant rhymes and alliteration to capture what growing up in the first MTV generation was like."-Cherise Oakley, Rain Taxi

"Caples (Complications) fills his newest collection with musicality and pathos, anchoring his playful language with ardent longing. Just like great power ballads, these poems are maudlin yet still authentically moving...A love song to Oakland, to idols, and to love itself, Caples's raucous, tender, and tuneful collection lives up to its title."-Publishers Weekly