To Hell With Good Intentions by Michael Martin Shea
Poetry, 40pgs
2024
"If William Carlos Williams swallowed a Xanax and three tabs of acid, if he attempted to take a long nap, and if his brain was wired to a contraption that transcribed his bad dreams into poems, they might look a bit like Michael Martin Shea’s placid, euphoric, and horrifying vision of the lyric. In To Hell With Good Intentions, things don’t merely contain ideas; rather, they vibrate like prophetic objects in a televised crime scene, overflowing with the alternate grief and joy of our excessive present—a world filled with burning Amazon vans, airborne Doritos bags, and a humanity that is both knowable and not: “new toes which grew inside you / teeth new mouth new endless revision.” I am in love with Michael Martin Shea’s “beautiful brain” and these violent, gorgeous little poems that crawled like neon worms from its folds." - Marty Cain
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“Imagine the rooms you imagined your life in. Get a little evil in the spring. Visions and omens, missed rubbish collection, spreadsheets and hooves. Union protests, loud gongs, sexual psychosis. Dead neighbors, dead friends, dead time. Marching orders, another memorial, hardstyle photos. Experience transcendental oneness in the Whole Foods produce section. Experience alienation while thinking about balloons. Break free of language and have a kick-ass summer. You will never get over what the daylight does to you.”
Read an excerpt online:
ISBN: 979-8-9886797-4-5
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Michael Martin Shea is the author of three previous chapbooks of poetry and hybrid prose: "Soon" (Garden-Door Press), The Immanent Field (Essay Press), and Comparative Morphologies (above/ground press). He is also the translator of the Argentine poet Liliana Ponce, and has published two bilingual chapbooks of her work. His poems and translations have appeared in Colorado Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fence, jubilat, New England Review, Poetry, TYPO, and elsewhere. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Lafayette, LA.
