Description:
Thirty-five selections of memoir, poetry, fiction, and essay explore masculinity, artistic creation, family bonds, and the role of cultural narratives in shaping identity amid social discord and global uncertainty.
Brief description: A poet and educator in the humanities, David Booth teaches teens in the San Francisco Bay area. Tell Me Please, What's the Matter is his second poetry collection, following his debut, Too Bright to See, published by Simi Press in 2021. He serves on the board of the Marin Poetry Center and shares insights on imaginative writing at sacredpedestrians.com.
Review Quotes:
e singular magic of David Booth's Tell Me Please, What's the Matter, resides in its
dazzling breadth of style and form, the way it both wanders and coheres with a smart,
probing curiosity that embraces humor and reverence. Steeped in dailiness and deep
contemplation, these pieces distill a witty, sustained world wariness as they traverse a
range of internal and external geographies, bringing us moments from a writing and
thinking life that explore concerns of marriage and family, literature and visual art,
history and our contemporary world. Unpredictable and idiosyncratic, Booth's vision is
nevertheless deeply, universally truthful. His acts of contemplation inspire and provoke,
and his voice is at once con dent and searching for something just beyond its grasp,
working in the tradition of great literature that unfolds toward discovery. ese pieces
of prose and poetry, which touch the edges of genre and expand what we expect from
language, are absolute gifts, worthy of time to savor and contemplate.
Amanda Moore
Author of Requeening
Existential in its scope, yet intimate in its scale, David Booth's Tell Me Please, What's
the Matter enthralls with sharp observations, poignant associations, and exquisitely
wrought sentences. rough eclectic vignettes, elegant concrete poems, and sweeping
lyric essays, Booth weaves the fraying lines of philosophical and aesthetic traditions into
contemporary kitchens and bedrooms, galleries and gardens, landscapes and minds on
edge in a distinctly American way. Artists and philosophers populate these pages, but
the speakers and characters who ponder them are not experts or academics. ey are
refreshingly, achingly, just trying to make sense of the world and each other. At its core,
this is a book about communication and relationships. A wise and tender humanity
permeates each connection and each failure to connect. Booth's ability to balance
invention and heart is a rare gift, and this is an extraordinary book.
Erin Rodoni
Author of And If the Woods Carry You