See Me Improving

Travis Nichols is a young poet and novelist who invites readers into a world of relationships gone strange. In his poems, everyday human behaviors become fraught with extraordinary significance. It's a delicate balance of orchestration and improvisation--both dizzying and oddly comforting. The poems, thick with vibrant language and semantic play, hint at a Rimbaudian derangement of the senses while being hyper-alert and completely alive. All my life I've felt destined not for the greatness of my heroes but the goodness of their followers. I knew, even when I found a piece of tooth in my Sausage McMuffin, I would surmount the poverty and dullness of my youth. I knew neither my poverty nor my youth would be significant enough to attract attention, only simple enough to graft onto the great biographies. Even when I felt uncommon and angry enough to steal balloons from the drug store and spit red paintballs through a peashooter at people making out in the park I knew I was no Billy the Kid . . . Travis Nicholsis an editor at the Poetry Foundation. He is the author of Iowa, a collection of poems, and Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder(Coffee House Press), a novel. He edits the online magazine Weird Deer and regularly contributes to The Believer, Paste, and The Stranger. He lives in Chicago.