Sharp Blue Stream
poems by David Lawton
“David Lawton is a fine poet and a terrific performer!” –John Sinclair, poet, former MC5 manager and White Panther leader
In this striking poetry collection, poet David Lawton surges and purrs in narrative poems touching on rock ‘n’ roll idols, beat icons, jazz and power, with a full-throated voice full of humor, warmth and soul. He explores Iggy Pop and other pop icons, as well as his own coming of age in Boston with startling insight and tender intimacy. Poet, former MC5 manager and White Panther leader John Sinclair remarks, “I know David Lawton as a generous friend, a fine poet and a terrific performer of his and even others’ works, and it’s a happy day when his poems meet the outside world like this. As an odist myself, I am particularly drawn to his homages to Herbert Huncke, Sonny Rollins and Alberta Hunter. He brings their lives and works to life in his verse and that ain’t easy to do.” And New York poetry performance artist Puma Perl agrees, noting, “David Lawton is a rascal. He’s a rockin’ Dennis the Menace, inviting you into a clubhouse filled with garage bands opening up for Sonny Rollins and Ruth Brown, and just when you feel the rhythm, he’s breathing in NYC sky black as motor oil and breathing out a lost friend. Unexpectedly a rhyme slips into the midst, but we can expect no less from a man whose sainted Irish Catholic mother falls in love with Mick Jagger.”
High Praise for Sharp Blue Stream
Sharp Blue Stream, David Lawton’s incredible poetry collection (Three Rooms Press, 2013), garnered high praise in a recent review by Susan Seligson in Bostonia Magazine.
“With titles like “Sonny Rollins,” “When the Chelsea Was The Chelsea,” and “The Other Stooges,” Lawton’s poems are soulful icons of his boomer vintage . . . The 95 poems in this collection, the playwright, actor, and musician’s first, also brim with humor and heart. His riffs on life swoop from the sublime to the quotidian.”
Read the full review at http://www.bu.edu/bostonia/fall13/reviews/
Emmy-award winning actor Michael Chiklis raves: “David’s poetry is insightful and alive, funny and observant, melancholy, yet filled with love and hope. In a world rife with angry nihilists and third person narcissists, it’s actually a downright relief to read a soulful, mature poet whose humility and humanity leaves you in tears.”
About David Lawton
DAVID LAWTON is a native of Woburn, Massachusetts, and a graduate of the Theatre Performance program at Boston University, where he was also a Guest Artist in the Graduate Playwriting classes taught by Nobel Laureate (in poetry) Derek Walcott. He has acted in several Off-Broadway plays, and had his plays performed Off-Off Broadway. For 10 years, he sang background vocals with the late 80s underground band Leisure Class. At the band’s de facto headquarters in the Chelsea Hotel, he befriended Beat godfather Herbert Huncke and San Francisco poet Marty Matz and was inspired by their embodiment of the written word.
Share This!