Overview

Jim Nisbet was an internationally known novelist, essayist, and poet whose groundbreaking noir fiction has cult followings in the U.S. and abroad. The poems collected here were written and distributed to his email list during the Covid- 19 pandemic. Like much of Nisbet's work, these poems are written in diction both stark and elevated, alternately tender, fierce, sweet, frightening - and always keenly aware of human frailty in the face of the unknown. Informed both by classical tradition and the immediate circumstances of the pandemic, these poems deal in matters political, spiritual, and cultural - but ultimately take the shape of an increasingly personal encounter with the phantasms of the pandemic. Taken together, The Plague Ditties form a poetic diary of uncommon artistic, historic, and metaphysical resonance.

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9781948596015

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Reviews

"INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR JIM NISBET ""Genre-defying ... dark, cerebral, and harrowing ... laced with humor and carried off in unexpected directions by exuberant wordplay....Themes as wide-ranging as sailing, particle physics, mathematics, ancient Rome, modern jazz, and urban subculture. San Francisco Chronicle ""An unheralded masterpiece.""- James Ellroy on Lethal Injection ""Jim Nisbet is a poet...[who] mixes the irony of Dantesque situations with lyric narration, and achieves a luxuriant cocktail that truly leaves the reader breathless. - Drood's Review ""Jim Nisbet's work has been tapping directly into the pulse of America for decades... [The] time is now for all of us to not only catch up to this unheralded master but to offer him the respect and regard that he deserves."" - Spinetingler ""Tough stuff, angry, sad, but also absurdly funny."" Marcus Münterfering, Krimi-Welt & Der Spiegelf ""Truly, hellishly gritty."" - Los Angeles Times ""Erudite and hallucinogenic."" Black Libelle ""Terrifying, sublime...., without ceding anything of his stylistic class: supple, smooth and flamboyant."" Sabrina Champenois, Libération ""Nisbet presents with wrenching effectiveness the fragile accommodations his characters have to make in order to survive in a hostile world they can never overcome and can keep at bay only for a time"" Publishers Weekly ""A catalytic crinkling that multiplies mental surfaces... poetic eloquence crosscut by irony."" Poetry Flash ""Now boarding: It is out of the question not to read Jim Nisbet... [His] is an exhilarating and exciting literary madness. Each of his books is a gem. Reading Jim Nisbet should be mandatory!"" Christope Dupuis, Le Nouvel Observateur"

Author Information

Novelist and poet Jim Nisbet was a seminal figure in the West Coast Noir Renaissance. His early novels were published with the original Black Lizard Press, gaining Nisbet an international reputation as a fiercely unique voice whose work defied easy classification. He went on to publish more than a dozen novels, widely translated, with editions in France (by Rivages, under legendary editor François Guérif), Germany, Italy, and more. The author of seven collections of poetry, including a translation of Baudelaire, he published essays and other work in an eclectic mix of international journals and magazines. Nisbet grew up in North Carolina. After graduating from UNC Chapel Hill, he headed out to San Francisco, where he lived for many years, immersed simultaneously in the intellectual life - in his career as a working writer - and his daily work as a cabinetmaker and tradesman. The Plague Ditties was his last book, written during the worldwide pandemic, and completed shortly before his death in 2022.

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