Poems I Wrote While Watching TV
Travis Jeppesen
images by Jeremiah Palecek
Travis Jeppesen’s debut collection Poems I Wrote While Watching TV is a ruthlessly implosive meditation on the death of language in a media-saturated world. Perfectly complimented by Jeremiah Palecek’s sardonic illustrations, Poems I Wrote While Watching TV ponders the mundane and the un-nameable with a highly personal mixture of devastation and humor.
Travis Jeppesen was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, studied literature at the New School for Social Research in New York and the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. He currently resides in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the author of a novel, Victims, which was selected by Dennis Cooper to debut his Little House on the Bowery Series for Akashic Books in 2003. His poetry, prose, and essays have appeared in numerous print and online periodicals, and his work has been translated into Russian, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, and Bulgarian.
Jeremiah Palecek attended the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, in Old Lyme Connecticut, was a visiting artist at the Glasgow School of Art, and received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, he maintains a daily painting blog. Jeremiah’s work has been said to be a collection of media detritus which is reconstructed, and (re)presented, through the medium of painting. While his work tends toward images culled from the more pop elements of our culture, there is always a sense of intense normalcy, which imbues his work with an air of confrontation. Having left America in 2003, Jeremiah Palecek lives in Prague, Czech Republic.
Nebulous Spectre
Pieces of matter transformed into holes.
Leave the pieces at salvation’s doorstep.
A million different ways of coming apart now.
It seems like the forevers once knew my sandwich.
Not anymore. So much
Passion in those files, the poisson in our archive,
Our history of lightness.
Deepness dwells inside the running man.
So many different spheres of inactivity competing to combine the two blank factors.
Sanitize backlaunch.
We haven’t slept together yet.
My human warmth blues get me down style.
Splurge into forgiveness; the puppet trope’s battle.
When the buttock soars…
Present escapes flashes of transplanted genus. Know how
Beneficial icy snatches of paradise can be when you’re singing the praises of the whale.
Dark splotches matter deeply.
Critical praise for Jeppesen’s novel Victims:
“A novel that utterly defies description. [A] thrill to read, and... the best debut novel I've read in a long time. Jeppesen's prose is stunning in its originality and power. Jeppesen’s novel has the potential to change your life.” — Michael Schaub, Bookslut
“Infused with schizophrenic logic and a gleefully unique syntax, Travis Jeppesen's debut novel, Victims, reads like a fictional embodiment of outsider art. Its bosky surrealism and anti-authoritarian aura suggest Henry Darger’s Realms of the Unreal, and like Adolf Wölfli, Jeppesen has a flair for skewed reasoning and an obsession with internment […] An artfully fractured vision of memory and escape, Victims maintains a rigorous structure throughout—even when the aliens show up.” — Michael Miller, Village Voice
POEMS I WROTE WHILE WATCHING TV
Travis Jeppesen
ISBN: 1-59971-340-3
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