Eric Anderson came to the press one day last month to help stitch copies of The Parable of the Room Spinning, our second hand bound, full length poetry collection. Those of you who read The Sun are familiar with Eric’s heartbroken, plainspoken poems, which The Sun editor Sy Safransky says are like “a friend offering fresh bread and hot soup on a cold day.”
Dan Chaon, author of Stay Awake, notes Anderson’s “uncanny knack for finding the macabre in the ordinary, and vice versa.” And just as he peels back the innate strangeness of our very personal everyday lives, Anderson offers up a tilted, disturbing peek into the world of our political elite:
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Pay no attention to the man in front of the curtain. Pay no attention to the curtain, the gold tassle edges sweeping dust from the stage. Pay no attention to the theater, abandoned seats like red velvet patrons, the house lights gone dim.
Pay no attention to the girl and her companions: the beast, the machine, the empty inside. Pay no attention to the witch’s curled toes, curled feet. Pay no attention to the sky; it’s only a backdrop. Pay no attention to the city’s two dimensions.
Pay no yellow, no brick, no road.
Pay some attention to the monkeys. Pay some attention to the little voices. Pay some attention to the girl after all, lonely, longing for home.”
–Eric Anderson, from “Barack Obama”
