EASYREEDER

Year of Valentines (Spuyten Duyvil)

In Year of Valentines, John Reed writes 80+ valentines to “you” (the loved one, the missed one, the lost one), and to New York City itself. Passionate and cool tempered, Reed’s second collection of sonnets sees creative origins in the No Wave movement—the set of his childhood—with its splendor of dissipation, and merciless affections.

The elegant, yet CBGB’s aesthetic echoes a downtown style; its cover features the work of John’s mother, Judy Rifka, who was a friend and contemporary to Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat as well as the John Waters muse, Divine, Jim Jarmusch player, Rockets Redglare and poet, Rene Ricard. (John has written extensively about the East Village of that period. For example, there’s: My Gay Uncles @ Gawker; The Golden Age of the Cockroach @ Vice; The Times Square Show @ the Paris Review, It Took A Village & Slate; or, Where Are All the Angry Young Men @ Out.)

Curtains

In the bluefire of the television
we watched the whole season and ate ice cream–
covered ourselves in Dulce de Leche,
until the bed was slick and sticky and
goopy and would have to be wadded up,
(us right inside with it), and thrown away.
What a marvelous doomsday that was.
Glory be, those good time armageddons
with space capsules and galactic mishaps
and warp travel accidental–“strap in
for a bumpy ride”–by meteor streams
dismade of onerous physical laws,
and good, so good, for total destruction.

John Reed’s Year of Valentines is an altverse where lovers dance–too close or too far apart—amid knife fights, gyro wrappers, and downright lies; where the suburb ends and New York begins, where the need-me crimson ribbon of mysterious gifts wends its way from Gansevoort Street to Pete’s Candy Store, from désastre to amor. Here the sonnet serves as ideal container for the strange passions and dispassionate cool of Reed’s wise young fools for love. Part airkiss, part gros bisous, it’s a collection of spells and blessings. —Tina Cane, author of Year of the Murder Hornet

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

A brilliant and challenging tour de force. Which could be said about every book of his. —Michael Lally

I’m reminded that a poem is the perfect place to be lost, in danger, and full of feeling. —Laura Cronk

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

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

Reed is a heartthrob of a writer. —Molly Peacock

A wicked illusionist. —Graham Reed, Los Angeles Journal

Through the mystery and transformation in the blood, along with reading John Reed’s Year of Valentines, we may become puppets of love or puppets out of love. —Richard Martin

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

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 narrator seemingly suspended above a great metaphorical chasm, either about to descend into oblivion or ascend to something sublime. —Gee Henry, Bomb Magazine

Published by Spuyten Duyvil Press

Order at Bookshop, Amazon, and Spuyten Duyvil

See John’s other work: