In An Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky by John Greiner
In An Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky is a twenty-five year journey beyond; beyond surfaces and stories told straight, beyond what the eyes see and the mind says. Greiner’s poems are his want to go further. Purposeful language in itself is a confine. Wanting to annihilate this confine and come to a space beyond conclusion, this collection of conclusive uncertainties, caught in language, calls out in a Siren song for a rising beyond. This is a step on the road of a tongue seeking strangulation and brilliant transcendence.
John Greiner’s poems perform at the pace of floating just inches from the ground. The rhythms of stride take the reader for a ride along the avenues of knowing; references that feel like old friends. In a circular philosophy, Greiner’s words remind the reader of how we came to poetry, stories and hope in the first place.
– Kathleen Florence, poet & playwright
In an Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky – John Greiner – Arteidolia Press 2022
REVIEW BY KEVIN HINMAN ON RAIN TAXI
You might think you’re in New York, but you’re not. Sure, you got on the F train downtown, but once you crossed the river, there was that gnawing sense you weren’t where you should be, that if you stepped off the platform you wouldn’t be greeted by the familiar sights of Jay St. or Prospect Park, but by something unnamable and wild. This is the space of John Greiner’s poetry. In his latest collection, In an Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky, the Brooklyn poet sets about transforming his borough into a linguistic playground that mashes geography, myth, and wordplay into uncannily effective verse. A reader quickly realizes they could get lost here—and these poems reward getting lost. (excerpt)
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REVIEW BY DANIEL BARBIERO ON OTOLITHS
In an Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky, a new collection of poems by John Greiner, gives a view into things, people and places from a poetic sensibility steeped in memory, sensation and a colloquial surreality at home in the contemporary city. Like the 19th century flâneur or the early Surrealists haunting the flea markets and seedy arcades of Paris, Greiner seems to take inspiration in the quick-cut, fragmented stimuli of city life, which serve as a background against which his reflections, recollections and free-form recitations take place. If a displaced sense of place is the default way of being in the urban atopia of the alien and anonymous, Greiner somehow finds his place there—in its apartments, restaurants and delicatessens, subway cars, amusement parks, and wind- and rain-swept streets.
“There” frequently is New York, which Greiner inhabits both physically and in the imagination. Consider the ending of “Sunday F Train Running all the way to Stillwell Avenue:”the local train is chasing me all the way
down to Coney Island and there’s going
to be a big and bloody crash when it crosses
paths with the Cyclone but I will be fine
sitting out this Sunday with you and your
pig pen skull on the beach after the wells
at Ruby’s wash our better manners away
John Greiner is a poet, playwright, short fiction writer and visual artist who lives in New York City. Greiner’s collections of poetry include Circuit (Whiskey City Press, 2020), Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), The Laundrymen (Wandering Head Press, 2016), Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press, 2014), Modulation Age (Wandering Head Press, 2012), Shooting Side Glances (ISMs Press, 2011) and Relics From a Hell’s Kitchen Pawn Shop (Ronin Press, 2010). Greiner’s plays have been produced in New York City, Chicago and Gloucester, Massachusetts. His work in décollage is a motion towards a more transcendent poetic language and his collaborative pieces with photographer Carrie Crow has been shown in galleries, museums and public spaces in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Venice, Hamburg and Berlin.
In An Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky by John Greiner
ISBN: 978-1-7369983-2-8
Published: January 2022
88 pages
$14
John Greiner is available for poetry readings.
For a review copy or additional information contact Arteidolia Press.
arteidolia[at]arteidolia.com
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