Bøker av Christopher Chambers

These poems boldly appropriate lines from interviews with famous and infamous artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers and architects, and with these found lines construct small literary objects with something new to say. The pattern of intense repetition creates an incantation in which shifts in meaning occur as the repeated lines are slightly revised and given a new context. The sampled lines reverberate between stanzas, creating echoes that slow us down, providing startling sonic views. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland in The Making of a Poem, call the pantoum a ""perfect form for the evocation of a past time."" This mash-up of that ancient form with the interview offers unexpected glimpses of the creative process that are nearly perfect for this strange time now. Quotes about interviews instead of quotes about the book itself?My opposition to interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.-James ThurberI get nervous when I do print interviews because I know that whatever I say is going to be shown through the lens of whomever I'm talking to.-Emma StoneThere's lots of interviews now where nobody seems to talk about anything. Like it's illegal. But it can be fun if you stay involved. Like most conversations.-Imogen PootsMy wife thinks I should do interviews by listening to the questions and playing the answers on the guitar.-David GilmourI've never really done any interviews as myself.-Sacha Baron CohenI never turn down requests for interviews. I'm just rarely asked.-Bob RossI often conduct interviews in my truck.-William Shatner

Chambers makes the smell and harrowing vibe of the mean streets of the nations capital come alive.Publishers WeeklyCrime ReadsMost Anticipated Crime Books of Fall 2022Dickie Cornish, Washington, DC street denizen turned unlicensed private investigator, is forced at gunpoint to track down the daughter of an ex-con, setting up a chain of events that unleashes a war within the corrupt police force, exposes shocking conduct in child services, and unearths a secret that threatens to tear the nations capital apart. The second book in the Dickie Cornish mystery series, STANDALONE is a must-read for fans of S. A. Cosby, George Pelecanos, and Joe Ide.Its been over year since that bleak Christmas when a rich man peeled homeless, drug-addled Dickie Cornish from a steam grate, cleaned him up, and convinced him to use his street connections to track down his missing property. Now, as the summer sun bakes those same mean streets, the air is thick with crime, contagion, corruption. Dickie struggles with sobriety, anti-psychotic meds, and counseling at the VA, but manages to make a meager living as a private investigator with his sidekick, Stripeuntil an ex-con named Al-Mayadeen Thomas sticks a gun to Dickies forehead and kidnaps him to a grim flophousea motel filled with squatters more desperate than the poor souls in the shelters.Thomas demands that Dickie find his daughter, missing for years from the motel in a notorious cold case. The other squatters plead for him to find their vanished children as well. Thomas takes his own life to seal Dickies help, Police Chief Linda Figgis hauls Dickie in, gives him a Faustian choice: she directs him to help her close the Thomas cold case, but only if he forgets about the other vanished and abused children. To his horror, Dickie finds himself in the middle of a war within the police, with either side closing in for the kill to keep the truth hidden.

In the lively, but desperate world of D.C.'s underbelly, filled with back-alley deals, gentrification clashes, and unexpected encounters between politicians and bottom-rung natives-all set against a soundscape of patois, street Spanish, and D.C. slang-a Black homeless man must hone his detective skills before he is punished for a brutal crime he didn't commit.