James Ducat’s new book of black out poetry is a collection of rejection letters that he has transformed into an equally funny and dark book. “A Field of Nopes” features both the original black out poems laid side by side next to the script for each poem.
A Field of Nopes will touch anyone who has ever put heart and brain on the line for a job—particularly those who have ever had to fend for their dignity and sanity in the brutal yet cruelly tactful academic market. These poems quietly blast through the wall of mystique surrounding rejection. Drawing from redacted official letters and other application materials, Ducat has delivered a collection that echoes the satiric tradition of Kafka and Vonnegut, the economy and wordplay of Dickinson and cummings, the lyricism of Rilke and Neruda. Readers will find here a kindred of yeses.—Jo Scott-Coe, Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman (UT Press)
The book is available at your favorite independent bookstores, direct from us as well as those sad big box sites like Amazon, Target and maybe their slightly happier compatriot Barnes and Noble.