Westerns and Dramas (2020)

While spending a year as poet-in-residence at the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, Pritikin wrote this book based on language borrowed from program summaries in TV Guides from the 1950s found in the Library’s archive.

Bay Area poet Brandon Brown said of the book, “TV Guide functioned as a Virgil for any lost pilgrim with a passion for the tube. In Westerns and Dramas, Renny Pritikin embarks on a journey like Dante's, conflating the timeless and the particular. Menacing villains and fearless heroes fulfill their roles as archetypes in these poems, but Pritikin does not spare us the “inner Nazi bacteriologist” fleeing the zeitgeist. These poems illuminate their decade for us inheritors, asking us to look at the forms of danger and courage in our own milieu. These poems may have come from the recycling bin, but in Pritikin’s hands they are full of information and wit. I love it. Tune in."

79 Pages, Softcover

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