But God Made Him a Poet
But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century is a reckoning with all the beauty and the white hot pain in the movies of Ford and his Right wing stars. Ford the socialist, Ford the anti-communist, Ford the general, Ford the artist, they all lived in one body and this book is an attempt to track his art and politics, to make sense of the greatest contradiction of the American cinema, as well as show just how much his influence is still felt today.
“Scout Tafoya revisits the movies of John Ford neither to praise nor bury him, but to show how alive his movies are 60 years after his death. To paraphrase Tafoya, reading about Ford’s films in chronological order has rewards far beyond the poetry with which the filmmaker used his camera and with which Tafoya uses his words.”
- Carrie Rickey, award winning feminist art critic for The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, The Boston Herald, and Artforum
So Much Heart
In a debut collection that is absurd yet grimy, brutal but tender, Drew Buxton announces himself as an audacious, if a bit unstable, new voice in fiction. So Much Heart is full of schemes, addiction, dead bodies, and intrusive thoughts, but somehow through it all runs a thread of deep compassion. With a wicked sense of humor, Buxton steers right into mental illness, masculinity, and American mythology. Long after you turn the final page, this book will leave you buzzing with life-affirming energy or hiding in your bedroom, alone, mumbling to yourself. Either way, you won’t forget this collection.
“There are a lot of found body parts in Drew Buxton’s So Much Heart, but these aren’t gruesome tales. Bodies—or just the parts—are handled in the same straightforward manner as the arrival of a pizza and Oreos before bedtime, a high-stakes Pogs game. And when things go full-on surreal, all remains quite normal. In fact, everything is just fine here in So Much Heart. I’m not sure what to call this ultra-realistic surrealism, but I love it and I love these stories.”
—Mary Miller, author of Biloxi and Always Happy Hour