Homesick (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Roger Fanning is a junk magician. In Homesick, his second book, he repeatedly drains popular culture of its pop and fizz and transforms it into poems that are substantial, surprising, and evocative. In "Lord of the Jungle, Larva-Nude," Tarzan stands revealed as an adolescent, self-conscious about his lack of body hair. In "Besides Dracula's Castle a Black Pool"-a sly critique of capitalism's excess-Nosferatu becomes "a slender old bachelor with his hair slicked back." For all his humor and ingenuity, Fanning never loses touch with the ache that underlies our daily lives.

"[Fanning] can keep life from being a long zombie convention. . . . Anyone not a bonehead should read this book." (Mary Karr)