Traffickwocky Austin Traffic Poetry & Whatnot

Austin, Texas: one of the hippest and hottest cities in the land. Live music, great food, college sports, easy livin', right? Perhaps. But a malevolent and voracious monster also dominates central Texas, threatening daily the utopian ideal. His name? The Traffickwock. Austin is consistently ranked among the nation's most congested cities and continued growth combined with an overwhelmed infrastructure don't necessarily suggest relief any time soon. Thankfully a bold and tireless poet has stepped up to make sense of it all. To fight the Traffickwock with the pen. To introduce the world to a previously unrecognized and unfairly unheralded literary sub genre: traffic poetry (and whatnot). That's right, no "expressway" is too jammed, no Austin driver is too important nor too pathetic to escape the meter and occasional rhyme of MoPac Tupac. Featuring a foreword by acclaimed writer and longtime Austin resident Tim O'Brien, Traffickwocky is here. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Tex MoPac was born in the backseat of a Greyhound Bus on TX-71. The bus was stuck in traffic. He considers himself the Bard of Austin Traffic. No one else considers him this. After a wonderfully sheltered upbringing in Tiffin, Ohio, he went to Kenyon College to study the “Mundane Movement,” a bold new type of poetry. His professors hoped he, like them, would write poems about doing laundry, washing dishes or standing outside of bathrooms dutifully holding their the better half’s purse. One day, however, MoPac witnessed a farmer’s hay wagon jackknife in downtown Gambier, Ohio, causing a three-car back-up. Ba-bam! - the first traffic poem was born. Mopac Tupac suggests that Austinites love to think they are united in some glorious and hip way: the love of live music, food trucks or college football. That may be true for some, but when you really get down to it, Mopac T. maintains, there is only one true unifying (and horrifying) experience, the abominable monster that seems to grow stronger by the day: traffic. Honk! Honk!