Songs of Chaos

By Bill Suter

Songs of Chaos is a collection of poetry, prose and prose poems that explores darkness and light and despair and courage both thoughtfully and ferociously. Its purpose is to teach our madness how to sing even if those songs are mere whispers. The works in this volume are both passionate and provocative, but they are also very honest and

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Plains Press
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087909950

Bill Suter

In Songs of Chaos, Suter twists familiar happenings into unknown paths, crafting a compelling narrative that can plunge the reader into a secretive darkness (as in "Under the Lighthouse," "Marionette," or "The Stone Garden"), while at the same time illuminating the themes of courage and resilience. At times darkly humorous, and at others filled with anguish or gleaming in sudden blazes of unbound happiness, these poems and poetic proses bear a rare veracity that is bound to remain with the reader long after having finished the book. - Federica Santini, author of Io era una bella figura una volta, and editor of Deconstructing the Model in 20th and 21st-Century Italian Experimental Writings Strong invention and pleasurable music await readers of this book of poems. The experience will lead the reader through many pathways and byways of sound and sense; and, though their coordinates may not easily materialize later, there will be no forgetting the memory of a progress through strange, even haunt- ing soundscapes. - Al Shoaf, author of Language to Live In & Erotic Reckonings

Book preview

Songs of Chaos

Songs of Chaos

Songs of Chaos

Bill Suter

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NewPlainsPress.com

Copyright © 2020 by Bill Suter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-7345719-5-0

Bill Suter 1959–

Published by Agreement

Summerfield Publishing

New Plains Press

Auburn, AL 

newplainspress.com

The prose poem Letter to Another Country, as it appears in its current form, was published in Volney Road Review in September 2020, and we appreciate the review allowing it to be published in this volume. 

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Contents

A Marriage of Heaven & Hell

Angel

Mister & Missing

Under the Lighthouse

Pretty Poison

On the Downside

The Way Goes On

The Apostle's Erection

Stepford Lives

Underground

Sign Language

The Mad Story of a True Man

Marionette

Witness

At the Gate

Gulliver

Eye of the Zombie

Rearview

Into the Air

Cinnamon

Fallen

Twilight

Bird of Perfect White Silence

American Dream Therapy

Letter to Another Country

When Beauty Met the Beast

The Conversation

Sleep Studies

War Games

Imaginary Lover

Auto Focus

Outward Bound

The Beloved Object

City on the Edge of Forever

Tragic Kingdom

Island of Lost Luggage

Sympathy for the Devil

I Am the Night. That Is My Name.

Baghdad Cafe

epitaph

Absurdistan

when parallel lines intersect

So Far Away from Here

Dialogue

Statesman

Creditorial

Buried Pleasure

Triptych

The Stone Garden

Fable

About The Author

A Marriage of Heaven & Hell

Writing in a style that befits you

like costuming the flesh,

forms a carapace of elegance

draped in dreams afresh.

In this quiet conveyance,

a hundred wonders play,

pressing themselves together

in the most alluring way.

There is no hope of resistance,

you're drawn to the dance again,

soothing the sacred hunger

with the rhythm of paper and pen.

Angel

I've got this ache

deep in my bones, and

I need your help

to chase it away–

it was this inspiration

that