I'm No Longer Troubled by the Extravagance

I'm No Longer Troubled by the Extravagance is a collection of poems that assign new meanings to the people and things of the past. The book moves in three sections through a fantastic landscape that maps human fragility. The poems in the first section speak to matters of the heart—intimacy and loss—punctuated by lovers who leave. The second section is comprised of prose poems chronicling misadventures and conspiracies: Russian spies on Wilshire Boulevard, artichokes that mate for life, and secret photographs of God. Finally, the third section pans out from individual experience, hosting the collective in fable-like reflections. Together, the poems in Extravagance mark with fragile acceptance the surreal extravagance of being alive.

The Relentless

One day we'll know how long
the dead have to be dead
before they feel hunger.
One day it'll be summer forever.
In the meantime, the weather,
looking for its cue, keeps an eye on me;
and I keep whatever money's in my pocket
crumpled in a ball. A relentless
responsibility dogs me, and the funny thing
is, these are the lyrics to a happy song.
Go ahead, tap your foot,
snap your fingers.
We're roasting a pig in the yard.


Rick Bursky is the author of Death Obscura (Sarabande Books, 2010) and The Soup of Something Missing (Bear Star Press, 2004), winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize. He lives in Los Angeles where he works in advertising and teaches poetry in the UCLA Extension Writer's Program.