Previously Feared Darkness

Picking up and pulling at the vibrant threads of Robert Priest’s last book of poems, Reading the Bible Backward, this collection explores new themes while spanning multiple strands of thought. One strand leads, with unabashed candor and elegance, through the author’s love life; another, through fields of praise; a third experiments with automated metaphors and delivers a challenging new selection of mash-ups that Priest calls meme splices. A fourth thread rekindles the author’s love of the prose poem to produce a suite of strange tales, bizarre playlets, and phonetic modifications. With flair and daring, Previously Feared Darkness consorts with forms and subject matter to present the work of a master getting deep, nasty, and hilarious with the best of them.