praise
AMERICANAPOCALYPSE
In AMERICANAPOCALYPSE, tommy wyatt blake writes in a kinetic, formally ambitious voice that critiques capitalism and Christo-fascism with quiet precision. With his signature portmanteaus—and through inventive play with caesura, shape, and form—the collection braids the speaker’s breakup with the rotting of American society under a Christo-fascist regime. Alternating sparse erasures of HR-speak with imagistic, lyrical confessionals, the poems confront capitalism, generative AI, and American theocracy through a trans lens. AMERICANAPOCALYPSE is a book that rejects silence and queers salvation.
— Rayne Alarcio, author of Starving the Wolf
The indomitable tommy wyatt blake has here wrought a condensed and potent crystallization of imposed, weaponized permacrisis as experienced by one among its innumerable targets—that is, all of us. Through a skillful mining of spam emails alongside unsourced poems, Blake creates an immersive microenvironment simultaneously critical of and highlighting the moment we’re living in—the endless-seeming AMERICANPOCALYPSE of the title. how do you feel about collecting // names in exchange for life, Blake’s poems ask, and it’s surprisingly difficult to answer.
Somehow terrifying, funny and hopeful in one breath, these poems remind us of the deep reality of shared vulnerability and the often absurd potentials revealed by interconnection: you see / the internet has become / a dispatch to all times.
How do we remake the weapons in language, how do we repurpose the words stripped of meaning, care, relation? Tommy Wyatt Blake shows us one possible practice.
—Jay Besemer, author of Theories of Performance and CHELATE
AMERICANAPOCALYPSE does what no other book could: it turns spam email into a genuinely engaging form of art. This feat is accomplished through a combination of searing political critique, dazzlingly surreal imagery, and enough tender and conversational moments to make it an accessible read for everyone from the poetry-curious to longtime fans of tommy wyatt blake’s work. I would recommend this to anyone who likes their anti-capitalist theory to be as enjoyable as it is relevant and timely.
—mk zariel, author of BOY APPARITION and DIFFERENT WITH HIM
tommy’s fantastic short book is an immediate classic in what we should call glitch lit. Erasures of spam emails is more than zeitgeisty—it’s the unwanted template of our poetics. “We expect you to vacate your comfort to accept this proposal.” tommy’s made a book out of the material of our distraction, cutting slop into stanzas you’ll want to hang out in. “Download/our software to begin,/insert it through the skull to be/a best fit for our ever-growing//company.” All the times I opened this .docx instead of Gmail or Instagram is time tommy literally saved, and I am real-life grateful for that.
—Robin Arble, author of Direct Address (Kith Books)
where to purchase
from Rockwood Press in print