Darren C Demaree

blue and blue and blue conveys the overwhelming importance of having (every so often) a complete washing off of your desire for success. Heading to the sea or the ocean on a trip is a classic setting for such narratives because of the immense power and repetition of the water, something that can bring a life into starker focus. If you can find a way to be simple and loving and a part of community that takes care with each other in a pronounced humanistic way, then everything else is superfluous. This book was written to bring you back into that.

Darren C. Demaree grew up in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He is a graduate of the College of Wooster, Miami University, and Kent State University. He is the author of nineteen poetry collections, most recently neverwell (Harbor Editions, 2023). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system and living in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children.

"One part ode and one part elegy to the last shimmers of a disappearing world, the luxury names the wonder and ache of a planet on a collision course. These poems bear no titles or punctuation, their form mirroring natural collapse with each vignette. But this is not an invitation for hopelessness. While Darren C. Demaree interrogates the guilt of having needs that 'are / bringing forth the ocean, ' and laments that even the poet must 'recreate the forests / on the page which is made / out of trees, ' he deftly catalogs the gifts we've been given - 'this was already / heaven' - as an invocation of what might still be saved. Though the impending climate crisis seems incomprehensible in scope, Demaree's words are a reminder that it's really about our home and each other. What else is worth fighting for?"-Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire

Burning It Down by Darren C. DemareeAt a time so charged with volatility, from an atmosphere so polarized, and nations not only socially-distanced but divided, comes this timely collection, volcanic eruptions of the social and political injustices that ravage the landscape. Furious and debauched and careening, with an intensity that never lets up, Darren C. Demaree reimagines The Bacchae through the lens of American politics, Ohio, and revenge in this stunning book-length poem about six friends and one drunk, fire-filled night. "We all / became brides / & grooms of this / night." This was a WILD read Once I started I couldn't stop --Todd Dillard, author of Ways We Vanish

"I had a professor in grad school tell me that no matter what the subject of the poem I was writing might be, every poem I wrote was a love poem, and understanding that about my own work has freed me up to take a lot more chances...I hope the readers are able to find a sense of joy in the poems." - Darren C. DemareeDarren C. Demaree is from Mount Vernon, Ohio. He is a graduate of the College of Wooster, Miami University, and Kent State University. He is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently "So Clearly Beautiful", which was published by Adelaide Books. He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and three children.

"Nude Male with Echo" examines and challenges male vanity, power, and expectation. While exploring the place of his gender in this world, Demaree's attempt to expand upon the expectations of "what makes a man", while drilling down into the artistic framework provided by the body and aging provides a new landscape for these modern questions.

Bombing the Thinker is the eighth book of poetry by the well known and award winning Darren C. Demaree. It is a rumination on middle america as told through the thought of the sculpture The Thinker, originally named The Poet, by Auguste Rodin. The Thinker Demaree is speaking from is one of the 27 Rodin supervised casts that sits outside of the Museum of Modern Art in Cleveland, Ohio. He documents all that he has seen and experienced around him, such as war, protest, anguish, love and ordinary life. It is a book that archives time as seen through a fixed art form, as well as a man.

The concise, almost cold nature of these poems, and the speaker's persona, is so stark, it mimics our very own political landscape, in all its deeply unsettling and troubling ways. In this way, these poems could not be more important, or come at a better time. Demaree captures the frightening loss of freedom and stiff standards we face as a culture right now, especially with lines like "They want your name. They want to know why you make love to your wife on Sunday." I am better for having read this collection. -Joanna C. Valente, author of Marys of the Sea

Darren C. Demaree yet again dazzles the literary intellect with his depthless exploration of human relationship, connection, and the transcendent community notable in any dyad. Through language that holds utmost beauty for its starkness on the page, Demaree guides the reader through nineteen cycles of poetry to once more move readers beyond the molten landscape of the earth to something extraterrestrial, something beyond the human that, without words, might never be touched at all. Here, he constructs a book with a voice to feel in every aspect of the body.

The Pony Governor by Darren C. Demaree is a series of politically charged poems that challenge shallow leadership and attack the abuse of power at the hands of those in charge. While at times aggressive, and with a penchant for not holding punches, the collection remains fair, aimed at engagement, redemption, and restoration from brokenness. Demaree addresses issues relevant to all readers attempting to find their way in the labyrinth of modern politics. He maps emotion through the various milieus people find themselves inhabiting under leadership gone bad. Despite the pain and struggle the poems often exhibit, they offer hope for a future free of exploitation, free of underhandedness, free of deception. These poems whisper and shout and ache and quiver. In the end, they stand accusatory and fearless.