With poems ranging from the confessional to the mock-autobiographical,
from imagism to a strange storytelling, from the comic and satirical to
the plangent and disturbing, Star Struck startles us with the many faces
of lyric poetry.
This book of poems by the award-winning poet David McCooey is made up of
four sections. The first documents an alienating encounter with a
life-threatening illness. The second plays out an unforgettable
obsession with darkness and light. The third brings together popular
music and the ancient literary mode of the pastoral. In this highly
original sequence we find, among other things, Bob Dylan singing Virgil,
Joni Mitchell reflecting on life in Laurel Canyon, a lab monkey
pondering the sound of music, and a bitter, surreal rewriting of 'Down
Under' for our times. In the final section, narrative poetry is cast in
an intensely new and uncanny light.