David Wyman’s poetry collection Violet Ideologies has been published by Kelsay Books. This is Wyman’s second book; his first, Proletariat Sunrise, came out on 2017, also from Kelsay Books. The poems express a dissident sensibility often exploring themes of our commodified identities in a culture subsumed by capitalism.
His poems have appeared in BlazeVOX, Dissident Voice, Zombie Logic Review, Clockwise Cat, Picaroon Poetry, The Voices Project, Squawk Back, Tuck Magazine, S/WORD and Genre: Urban Arts among other publications. He’s a fan of Noam Chomsky, jazz guitar and the visionary poetry of William Blake.
Violet Ideologies is available on the Kelsay Books website, on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and Powells.com
Violet Ideologies, David Wyman’s second collection, lays out a brilliant spectrum of incongruous ideas. It’s ominous yet funny, apocalyptic but oddly serene, a splice of the beautiful and the monstrous. The result is “a binary like foxglove” where the language of Wall Street is grafted to the poetics of the natural world. It is a book for our times, when translating corporate-speak has become almost impossible and the day’s “official transcript gets redacted.” Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Wyman asks and the answer is evident. Still, he won’t stop reminding us there is more to see than spread sheets and trendy electronica: horses gathered along a stone wall, a pub where poems taste like hard cider, songs sung to infants. Commodified language insists on a mandatory unity, even as lyricism escapes its confines again and again. Can the binary be broken? The book isn’t saying.
Lori Lamothe author of Kirlian Effect
In Violet Ideologies, “worn hearts/turn meaning into value.” Wyman knows that as sure as authority is constructed, “Landscape is temporary too.” Things are held in orbit by the caustic sting of pure feeling. It’s never a slow tectonics, but a rapidly shifting reality. Writing to “awakening/to an even greater understanding/of the inner dimensional self” is an uncomfortable benediction.
Jess Mynes author of One Anthem