JOYBUZZER

From the press: With all the manic zeal of a clown show, Henry Goldkamp’s debut collection JOY BUZZER takes a bowie knife (a pillow! a leaf blower! a foam noodle!) to the absurdities of contemporary life, especially those of the poet’s life. Utilizing his invented form of the joy buzzer—named for the practical joke device that delivers a shock when shaking hands—Goldkamp aggravates the distinctions be- tween poet and clown, page and stage, line and punchline, and humor and grief. Goldkamp juggles difficult realities of the current moment—consumerism, climate change, the military industrial complex, a mental health crisis—with the art and artifice of an enter- tainer, even as a frenetic refrain (Hi, I’m Henry) asserts the person beneath the clown paint. Ultimately, this raucous, hilarious, and utterly unique collection leaves the reader feeling like an audience member after the curtain has fallen and the lights have flicked back on: stunned, squinting, and looking at their surroundings with new eyes.