“These poems take the reader running at a fast clip. Much better than same old descriptions of the down & out.” —Charles Plymell, author, Benzedrine Highway

In his impressive third volume of poetry, Peter Carlaftes digs into the beauty—and lunacy—of contemporary pop culture and its tendency to masque and disrupt the sustainability not just of the planet, but human nature itself, from love and ecstasy to anger and grief. The poems in Life in the Past Lane are both daring and discreet, ranging from full frontal assaults on political and religious cults to tender, discerning, intimate studies of the challenges of self-faith, relationships and maintaining quiet equilibrium in the noisy space of modern life. Risk-taking and endlessly innovative, Life in the Past Lane offers poems that dare to ask questions to which there is no answer, and to answer the unasked. It looks at the past clear-eyed, without reverence, and studies the place in the road where we are now, weaving cultural and personal memory with the currency that too-often ignores how we arrived. This extraordinary collection, relentlessly accessible, surprises with the depth of poems and the clarity of the thoughts, concepts, and execution that forged them.

LIFE IN THE PAST LANE: Poems by Peter Carlaftes
978-1-953103-40-6 | 128 Pages | TRP-107 | $16.00
Pub Date: 09/26/23

 

 


PAST PRAISE FOR PETER CARLAFTES

For Drunkyard Dog

“These poems take the reader running at a fast clip. Much better than same old descriptions of the down & out.” —Charles Plymell, author, Benzedrine Highway

“A brilliant poetic voice filled with drop-dead humor, searing insight, and resilient originality, even while resonating with overtones of Bukowski, Baudelaire, and Bogart.” —The Observer

For I Fold With the Hand I Was Dealt

“Carlaftes’ work creates a generational, calmly amorphous biography for you 60s kids. Some of the poems are either autobiographical or a cunning simulacrum. But no matter if the bio material is auto or not; it’s all here—the bizarre suburbia, the darned love, the American upheaval personified in the dashed and broken folks one meets in any doomed city. Carlaftes encounters with the Catholic Church and teen hitch-hiking mirror my own to an, ahem, disturbing degree. The joyous blasphemy of the poem calendar christ is worth the cost of the book alone.” —Ron Dakron, author Hello Devilfish


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Carlaftes

Peter Carlaftes is author of five books including the poetry collections Drunkyard Dog and I Fold With the Hand I Was Dealt and two collections of plays: Teatrophy and Triumph for Rent. Since 2008, he has served as co-editor of the annual contemporary dada journal, Maintenant. He was editor of The Faking Of The President: Nineteen Stories of White House Noir, a finalist for the 2020 FOREWORD INDIES Best Anthology Award. His poetry has appeared in NYC from the Inside, Love Love Magazine, Chorus: A Literary Mixtape and many more. He is co-founder and co-director of Three Rooms Press.

 

 

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