Gregg Shapiro / Fear Of Muses
In Fear of Muses, Gregg Shapiro’s poems explore the evolving depth of love and becoming through a delicate and fine-tuned reckoning with familial and relational history. The third (and latest!) of his trilogy of poetic pop-culture explorations of family, love and memory from Souvenir Spoon Books. Get it today!
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ADVANCE PRAISE:
Fear of Muses reads like a poetic diary of plain spoken secrets that we are lucky enough to uncover. In each poem, clear narratives convey the simple heartbreak of loss and the gustatory joys of this strange life. There isn’t a poem in this collection, whether long or short, ode or epic, that didn’t please me. Almost journalistic in its recounting of rich memory, this collection spans decades and universes of experience while remaining anchored in immediate sensory details. Shapiro’s calm and sure voice guides us exactly where we need to go: inward, towards the things that ask us to remember what an odd and beautiful, confounding and frustrating, lovely and absurd world this is. Brendan Walsh
The poems in Gregg Shapiro’s Fear of Muses emerge as time capsules-in-verse. Part ode to memory, part keen-eyed deconstruction of popular culture, part homage to the amuses that lurk in every line—a beloved friend, Felicity Huffman, gas station flowers, Dolly Parton, the DMV—these irreverent, imagistic poems provoke, question and remember all that will never be forgotten. Caridad Moro-Gronlier
I’m here to tell you the poems in Gregg Shapiro’s Fear of Muses are poems you’ll read aloud again and again. They’ll have you cataloguing all the things you can’t forget, reflecting on friendships and the familial, treat you to Kate Bush and Dolly Parton cameos, and so much more. Fear of Muses is a collection to “be held close to [your] chest, like a good hand of cards.” Dustin Brookshire
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gregg Shapiro is the author of eight books including the poetry collection Fear of Muses (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2022). Recent/forthcoming lit-mag publications include The Penn Review, Exquisite Pandemic, RFD, Gargoyle, Limp Wrist, Mollyhouse, Impossible Archetype, Red Fern Review, Instant Noodles, Dissonance Magazine, and POETiCA REViEW, as well as the anthologies Moving Images: Poems Inspired by Film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2021), This Is What America Looks Like (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2021) and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology From Middle America (Belt Publishing, 2021). An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his husband Rick and their dog Coco.
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