in ghostly onehead

American experimental poet, J. D. Nelson, with voicings singular and unique, in in ghostly onehead, his first full-length collection, constructs a playful, melancholic elision. Employing purposeful, visionary poetics including cut-up techniques, he aspires to the radiant, exhibiting taut, bold clarity. A divine mix of the inward, contemplative, and hilarious, Nelson's poems propose a new-world where "violin hats" and "skin-suits" are in evidence, a crossroads, both circuitous and carnivalesque. The book induces in the reader, a deeply wrought current of ecstasy, the almost-celestial. A synesthesia of a broken-down America, of constructed landscapes where "closing another bank account at midnight/the same meal plan for days and days" is the norm. We discover, journeying back from sacred empty places there is enough "soup for the lonely world", while "the earth bursts/the moon of that". One poem's narrative asserts from "cuts on my hands from puppy teeth/I become the wolf". In another, a voice proclaims, "I've won this earth/I'm wording it this way". A bravo achievement! Get your hands on this superlative collection (a tour de force).

-Robert Frede Kenter, poet, visual artist, publisher of Ice Floe Press