The Purpose Pitch

Kathryn Mockler

ISBN 978-1-77126-069-5
$17.00 CDN/USA
96 pages

Drawing from a range of contemporary poetic traditions, The Purpose Pitch explores the overlap between narrative, pop culture, and the political. These poems are often funny, sometimes harrowing, and always unsettling. Through rants, narrative prose poems, absurdist dialogues, brutal police reports, invented biographies of real people, Google search results, and celebrity-interview mash-ups, Mockler shows us just how Boschian Western culture is in the twenty-first century.

REVIEWERS ON KATHRYN MOCKLER

“Here we are in the presence of subjects and predicates wielded bravely in the plain language of telling, as inherited, absorbed, reflected in the ‘family of work’ that includes, among others, Lydia Davis, J. Robert Lennon, and Richard Brautigan. Mockler’s first lines set worlds into motion…”

—Stephen Osborne, Geist

“Mockler’s skill with language and narrative beat lends itself well to these unapologetic poems… There is heart and terrific depth in this work.”

—Rayanne Doucet, Canadian Poetries
“Mockler’s bold, brilliant poems brim with shock and surprise.”

— Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press
“Mockler is [a] literary gem, producing a pithy volume that is touching, playful, and unpretentiously saturated with brilliant insight.”

—Kane Faucher, Western News