Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems (C&R Press)

Collected Lies and Love Poems, selects from a sequence of sonnets written from 2008-2015. Reed, the author of five previous books (three novels and two “stunts”) lends his voice and eclectic abilities to this singular work, which, in addition to being a book of sonnets, is part love letter, part literary ode, and part delusion. Evolving the classical sonnet, a form which still captures our spirits, Reed summons our contemporary yearning: sugar sweet to splash of acid. “Come to me,” writes Reed in sonnet #6, “like tomorrow to a child.” Sonnet #41, in contrast, offers the lyrical confession, “All I want to do is stab people.” With his plaintive lines, Reed gives expression to the inner ghost of the Twenty-First Century; sonnet #65, a valentine, wonders “Momma, are there other wooden children?” Free Boat spans 54+ sonnets, and that’s a lot of sonnets, but Reed’s stylistic ease guides his audience through an experience more akin to reading a photo essay. Indeed, of the 23 images in Free Boat, 9 are photographs by the author. Rhapsody, serenade, picaresque, Free Boat would be as comfortably tabled with Nadja by Andre Breton, as it would be with The Dream Songs by John Berryman, Delta of Venus by Anais Nin, or Under the Net by Iris Murdoch.

Published by CONSCIOUS & RESPONSIBLE PRESS

This may be what it takes to get people to read poetry. —Vice Magazine

John Reed’s Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems is a brilliant and challenging tour de force. Which could be said about every book of his. —Michael Lally

John Reed exploded my concept of a sonnet. —Erika Anderson, Electric Literature 

There’s something dangerous here. —Elizabeth Trundle, The Brooklyn Rail

John Reed’s wonderful new book Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems gives me that … love and quirkiness that I crave, while being a more interesting and fulfilling artistic experience. … Love poems with built in lies and upside down truths, in which you can find a story of your own—and how you think about relationships. —Susan Marque, Tin House

Reed is a real New York City character—mysterious yet completely accessible, old-school but cutting-edge. A few years ago, he started sharing some newly written sonnets. … Although they were largely about love, or desire, they weren’t really fit for readers looking for happy-ever-after scenarios. Many ended with a narrator seemingly suspended above a great metaphorical chasm, either about to descend into oblivion or ascend to something sublime. —Gee Henry, Bomb Magazine

Reed has brought music’s remix culture to literature with stunning results. —David Gutowski, largeheartedboy

Readers of contemporary poetry have marveled at what Diane Seuss and Terrance Hayes have accomplished with the serial form. To illuminate another brilliant practitioner, I give you John Reed. … These sonnets follow the misadventures of lovers who slip in and out of identities, variously becoming puppets, magicians, gamblers, witches, skeletons. It’s the speaker in these sonnets who anchors the project. Part id and part love-lorn ghost, we follow a voice into Luna Park and keep going, back into the very real experience of wanting what we want. I’m reminded that a poem is the perfect place to be lost, in danger, and full of feeling. —Laura Cronk