 |
|
|
Balance Act
By Ken Cormier
|
|
Balance Act is Ken Cormier's first published collection of prose and poetry. Ranging in mood from all-out hilarity to heart-stopping melancholy, Balance Act utilizes a consistent thread of music and rhythm to propel its language. Cormier's extensive background in percussion informs his writing at every level of the process. Simply put, Cormier brings performance to the page, and Balance Act is his one-man variety show.
Cormier's stories peel back the layers of a bent suburban landscape, and his characters scratch and claw to find inspiration on the railroad tracks, to bear the absurdity of family dysfunction, to trade the bitterness of complacency for the thrill of total annihilation. The poems reinforce his over-arching themes, punctuating the text like rapid-fire epiphanies.
The book's final and longest installment, 'Havris and Malen,' is the story of two brothers attempting to juggle fate, family, and friendship against a backdrop of unpredictable magic and a closet full of tired secrets. Similar in form to Gene Toomer's 1923 classic, Cane, Cormier's Balance Act is a diverse blend of poetry and fiction, a hyper-speed, gear-shifting monologue for the schizophrenic masses.
Praise for Balance Act
"Balance Act is a no-net, bare-naked, high-wire performance that defies gravity with hilarity, with absurdity, and with a blessed surround-sound of song. Ken Cormier cuts language to its tender, small bone-words and rattles them like crazy."
— Janet Kauffman, author of The Body In Four Parts, Collaborators, Places In The World A Woman Could Walk, and Characters On The Loose
Praise for Ken Cormier
"Ken's set is like a William Burroughs exorcism through a karaoke machine, whipping the crowd into a frenzy, filled with amazement and genuine toe-tappin' joy — it's a perfectly choreographed musical and literary event."
— The Noise
Read more about Ken Cormier »
|
|
Poetry ·
Canada $12.99 · US $9.99 · UK £7.99 ·
Trade paperback
·
1-895837-67-7
·
104 pages
·
5 1/4" x 8 1/4"
·
Insomniac Press
|
|
|
