The Dream Police: Selected Poems, 1969-1993
With each new novel, Dennis Cooper's reputation as the most daring and distinctive writer in America today is cemented. To anyone familiar with his writing--which the New York Times calls "taut, chillingly ironic," the Washington Post Book World terms "brilliant," and the Village Voice deems capable of "religious intensity"--it will come as no surprise that before he achieved success as a novelist, Dennis Cooper was best known as a poet.Cooper's first collection, Idols, is considered a classic of gay literature, and his second, The Tenderness of the Wolves, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His poems have been sampled by rock bands and appear in several important anthologies, including Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, and American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late. He has also been featured in the PBS series The United States of Poetry.The Dream Police collects the best poems from five of his previous books and also includes a selection of new works. From his darkly erotic early verse to the more refined, post-punk poems that led critics to dub him "the spokesperson for the Blank Generation," to his later experimental pieces, Cooper's evolving study of the distances and dangers in romantic relationships has made him a singular voice in American poetry.The Dream Police is a vital addition to Dennis Cooper's riveting and disarming vision of life, love, obsession, and the depths of human need."The Dream Police fights the context of poetry in a way I can only call urgent and beautiful. He is interested in evacuating all notions of poem to begin again."--Bruce Hainley, The Village Voice Literary Supplement"There can be no doubt about the power and originality of Cooper's writing."--The Washington Post Book World"Cooper's language is at first intense, nearly minimal, then suddenly it ascends into vision."--Kathy Acker"In another country or another era, Dennis Cooper's books would be circulated in secret, explosive samizdat editions that friends and fans would pass around and savor like forbidden absinthe. He would risk his life for them, or maybe he'd just be sent to a mental asylum, like the Marquis de Sade, to whom he has been compared. This is high risk literature. It takes enormous courage for a writer to explore, as Mr. Cooper does, the extreme boundaries of human behavior and amorality, right to the abyss where desire and lust topple into death."--Catherine Texier, The New York Times Book Review"Cooper has given voice to an emptiness we can barely stand to think about.... He dallies with the workings of narration and, in doing so, with the meaning of self. His work belongs to that of Poe, the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, and Georges Bataille, other writers who argued with mortality."--San Francisco ChronicleDennis Cooper is the author of the novel Guide, Closer, Frisk, and Try, as well as the short story collection Wrong. He is also the author of three volumes of poetry, Idols, The Tenderness of the Wolves--which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize--and The Dream Police. He lives in Los Angeles.