I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So by Ace Boggess
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I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So is comprised of poems the author wrote as responses to questions he collected over the years, whether asked directly or mined from other poems, novels, billboards, surveys, Facebook memes, leaflets, and many other places. He used these questions as a way of looking inside his life, the lives of the askers, and the world around him.
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-947021-32-7
Release: August 28, 2018
Every poem in Ace Boggess's new collection, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, begins with a question as the title; here are some of my favorites: "Do You Think That the Guitars Are Happy?" "Where Is Your Troubled Faith?" "What If the Phone Rang and Offered You the Past?" “Would You Like to Be on the Moon With Me, Darling, or Would You Be Afraid?”
These questions come from diverse sources: Twitter, Facebook posts and memes, roadside billboards, news broadcasts, spam emails, quotes from other writers, medical questionnaires, snatches of overheard conversation, internet surveys, political leaflets, texts from friends—the crazy salad of our own daily lives. But Boggess transforms them into poems. He doesn't attempt to give us easy answers, but rather, uses the questions as a bass line or melody on which to riff. And we, his readers, just need to buckle our seatbelts and enjoy the ride.
~Barbara Crooker, author of Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems and Les Fauves
A new book by Ace Boggess is always a cause for celebration, and I Have Lost The Art Of Dreaming It So is no exception. Boggess’s singular take on life is evident throughout this standout collection. Divided into 3 sections; Poetics, Ethics and Metaphysics, these poems tap into living’s dark interior, violence a recurrent theme, love and self-acceptance the elusive goal.
“Stay out of trouble,” a poet counsels Boggess in “Do You Like Your Infamy?” But maybe in trouble isn’t such a bad place to be, if it results in heart-wrenching poems like these.
From the lyrical splendor of “Do You Think the Guitars Are Happy,” to the celebratory chords of “What Feels Better Than Noise from Our Nights?”, these thoughtful, questioning poems explore the prisons we inhabit, both brick and mortar, and the ones we make for ourselves.
-- Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of Junkie Wife, poetry editor, Cultural Weekly.