Ezra Lipschitz was born in 1955, then mostly raised as a Catholic with a Jewish last name in Colma, California–a necropolis for the city of San Francisco. An early-life concoction that he claims was a short road to eventually becoming an atheist. He completed a degree in English at UC Davis, but doesn’t recall getting his diploma. He travels the Southwest as a folk musician and storyteller. And drinker. When he stays in one place for any amount of time, it is usually in his cabin at the foot of the Rockies in Southwestern Colorado, near the border of New Mexico.
Arse Poetica… is the second book in a trilogy that began with the collection I Shouldn’t Say… and will end with Apocalypse Now–a trilogy he did not necessarily want to put out. However, Nathan Brown, owner of Mezcalita Press, asked permission to do it for him, because the timing of the pieces about Donald Trump is simply too important.
The book is divided into four chapters. The first is I Shouldn’t Have…. The second is Some Pretty How Town. The third is Pig Feet on Wall Street, a section that begins to get a bit more political. And the final chapter is called God Song. The poems in this collection reach back into some older material that confronts Ezra’s feelings about poetry as a genre, but also poets as writers, performers, and general problems for society, not to mention themselves.
The fact that he is a prolific poet goes hand in hand with his cantankerous and contentious soul. And, when Brown approached him about letting him do this trilogy, Lipschitz initially said No. However, he later agreed, saying, Well… as long as I don’t have to edit the damn things. And no readings. He would do no readings. Poetry readings are insufferable marathons of the waning spirit and dying soul as far as he is concerned. So, don’t bother asking again.
Brown, however, insists that the world will be better off with these terribly raw and honest poems in it. So… release the inner curmudgeon.
