Tabloid News

John Leax

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Retail Price: $10.00
Subject Category: Poetry
Length: 57 pages
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Binding: paper
Published: August 2005
ISBN: 978-0-9743427-6-4

 

One afternoon when poet John Leax was standing in a grocery store checkout line, a tabloid news headline beckoned: "Leaping Turtles Invade US." As he looked more closely at the accompanying image, two lines sprang into his imagination: Suppose one could believe the tabloid headlines. Suppose the stories under them were true. Leax later wrote that "true story." Then he wrote another. And another. They are all collected in Tabloid News, his fourth book of poems.

As he wrote, Leax explored two linked impulses that he found in the tabloids: desire and fear. We desire connection to beings other than ourselves. Yet we fear what we do not know—what is alien or different from us. In poems like "Baby Born with Antlers," "Dog Makes $60 Million Modeling" and "Duck Hunters Shoot Angel," Leax grapples with this conflict between desire and fear humorously, chillingly, poignantly and artfully.

If you've ever been attracted by a tabloid news headline, these poems are for you.

Book Excerpts

Preface and Five Poems [PDF]

Table of Contents

Preface: Writing Tabloid News

Leaping Turtles Invade US
Baby Born with Antlers
Adoption Agency Sells Shaven Apes as Human Infants
Smartest Ape in the World Goes To College
World's Fattest Twins Arrested for Stealing World's Fattest Cat
Dog Makes $60 Million Modeling
Bat Boy Is Missing
Meet the Amazing Half Man Half Pig
Duck Hunters Shoot Angel
I Want To Have a Space Alien's Baby
Merman Caught in South Pacific
Bizarre Creature Spotted in Louisiana Bayou
Montana Police Shoot Bigfoot
Real Life Cat Woman Found in the Ozarks and She's Looking for Love

About John Leax