Connecticut-born author Brendan Walsh has drawn on his experiences across country and globe to write 'Go' (Aldrich Press), a new poetry collection that follows the journey of several voices through travels in Laos, South Korea, and across the United States.
'Go' grapples with nothingness, the primal ecstasy of movement, and the variance of human consciousness and desire. The focus begins on Lao voicesthose of a foreign speaker interacting with Lao monks and women planting rice, a quiet observation of an unknown but familiar place. It moves to South Korea, inhabiting the voices of two Koreans and an outsider at odds with a foreign culture. Finally, the collection ends in the United States, the former home of a speaker who feels empty but sees flashes of brilliance on road trips and in day-to-day life. Ultimately, the collection reconciles its longing with movement, finding answers outside of concrete explanations, but through the act of doing and being purely in the flesh. "In this full-length collection, Brendan Walsh wins us the way Buddhist temples win over acolytes: with their truths about suffering, the community of prayer halls, sacred reliquaries that follow the emptiness of courtyards. This poetry grounded in the experience of place becomes animate, takes form, gathers Laos, Korea, and the U.S. in its hot dance, a globe spinning to the rhythm of the eternal divinity in each of us," says Lynn Houston, author of The Clever Dream of Man. "'Go' is an energetic and wise first collection, and its travels continue well past the final page," adds Ruthless's Jeff Mock.Videos