Detective in Distress: Philip Marlowe's Domestic Dream (Brownstone Chapbook Series No. 5)

Brewer, Gaylord

Borgo Pr

Since winning the Pulitzer for his Glengarry Glen Ross, playwright David Mamet has written only one original, full-length play, Speed-the-Plow-yet he has written nearly ten original screenplays. His movement in this direction is both surprising and, ironically, inevitable. Studied here are Mamet's screenplays (such as The Postman Always Rings Twice and We're No Angels), the influence of film on his recent plays (The Shawl and Speed-the-Plow), his theory of directing refined from his "writerly" principles of montage storytelling, and the reciprocal impact of his films and plays are discussed. Particular emphasis is placed on the author-director relationship in House of Games and Things Change. A complete filmography includes his 1992 work on the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross and Hoffa.

David Mamet and Film: Illusion/Disillusion in a Wounded Land

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

McFarland Publishing

In The Feral Condition, Gaylord Brewer's tenth collection of poetry, the poet engages more deeply than ever before in his work the challenges and rewards of the untamed world. In this uniquely private yet universal series of intersections with the wild--ranging from the Catalonian Pyrenees to rural Portugal, to Costa Rica, to the poet's home in Tennessee--serendipitous moments abound, whether small or grand, sought out or fatefully offered. How to translate these glimpses of what remains? How to amend one's own life to a stark yet crucial summons? In these unforgettable meditations, poems by turns whimsical, harrowing, and delightful, Brewer undertakes an answer.

The Feral Condition

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Negative Capability Press

Poetry. Gaylord Brewer's third book of poetry evokes all the senses through its use of metaphor, character, landscape and precise imagery with tough, memorable writing. Reviewing Brewer's Presently a Beast in the Asheville Poetry Review, M.A. Roberts writes, "I make the unlikely comparison between Muhammad Ali and Brewer in hopes of some semblance of how Gaylord Brewer approaches the world and how he poetically writes about it. That is, aggressively, unflinchingly, with fluidity and cadence, with playfulness and craft. Brewer's poems are persistent in probing the tough masks of civility, always sniffing out the beast that lurks behind our well-prepared lives."

Four Nails

Snail's Pace Press

"There's a feeling of peace to these poems, a calmness of deliberation in their rhythms,sa curiosity that doesn't tear or probe so much as wash across Brewer's subjects. The masterful tempo of his work convinces me that what he says is what must be said, thought and emotion unfolding in natural order. I enjoy his imagery, am drawn to the self revealed, but it's the breath of this book that I believe."-Bob Hicok; "One of our best poets, Gaylord Brewer, is at the top of his game in The Martini Diet. In one poem, the speaker calls himself "note taker of the exotic." In truth, from the exotic to the everyday, the book explores a wide range of subjects with both wit and wisdom, that lovely, rare combination. I'll down as many martinis as this accomplished brew-master can serve up, and bang the table for more. And the next morning, the next, the next, I'll remember the wonderful words and images in all their vivid detail. Here's to the pleasure that awaits the reader-drink up!"-James Doyle

The Martini Diet

Dream Horse Press

Admirers of Gaylord Brewer’s dark and lyrical poetry will be delightfully stunned by this frantic detour into fiction, Octavius the 1st. Against a backdrop of dog walking and the bloated throat sac of the male siamang gibbon, through a gauntlet of good ole home cookin’ and the beatific lunch specials of the deli Cheeses Christ, to a soundtrack of soap operas and his own labored breathing, our protagonist, Octavius Trotter―lonely, hungry emperor of his mind―gambles the world’s meagre wages of love and longing. Jonathan Livingston Seagull meets The Bridges of Madison County. A dollop of John Kennedy Toole, a swizzle of Kingsley Amis, a sprinkle of Joyce. This alternately tender and brutally hilarious long novella emerges as something new, yet still contumaciously, caustically, inimitably Brewer. You are about to enter the “Otto Zone,” and life is about to change.

Octavius the 1st

Humor & Satire

Red Hen Press

Gaylord Brewer's ninth collection of poetry, Country of Ghost, is by turns harrowing, haunted, and darkly humorous, and always deeply felt. When the figure Ghost appears—crossing a bridge in Spain, beside a river of the dead in France, across a midnight lake in Finland—our speaker follows into a ravenous geography of longing and regret. In this astounding sequence of poems, who has summonsed whom? Brewer's folie à deux explores both the worlds of the living and of the dead, worlds alternately aching and tender, and of the spirits caught between them. 

Country of Ghost

From python hunting to Swami Keerti’s laughing meditation, from a death in the family to a burial on the rural acres where he’s stood his ground for a decade, Gaylord Brewer extends and explodes his career-long obsessions in Give Over, Graymalkin. This 8th collection of poems is a journal of loss and recovery, departure and surprising return, fleeting hours in a world diminished yet wondrous. Seas writhe with uncharted beasts. Horsemen gather, conflagrant beneath sword and cross. A daughter mounts a bicycle and a divorcé has the Harley delivered. From India to France to Spain, to the birdsong and day lilies of his unruly garden, Brewer continues as poetic conquistador mapping our longing, melancholy, and joy. With his characteristic wit and compassion, signature sculpted lines, and incantatory vigor, buried metaphors arise, holy days pass, toasts are raised, suns set over the desert of the animate dead. And the weary traveler? He approaches a dark corridor that may or may not be the way home.

Give Over, Graymalkin

Gaylord Brewer’s The Poet’s Guide to Food, Drink, &amp; Desire is an immediately delightful and surprising work by one of this country’s best poets. Indeed, the poet himself calls this book a “quirky volume,” the genesis being the desire to create something substantially different and sustained. Since food “had been increasingly creeping into my poetry,” Brewer writes, and because he had been asked to write anecdotally about recipes by a journal editor, this unusual memoir took shape. As is the example of his best poems, these recipes are every bit as enjoyable, memorable, and delivered—of course—tastefully.

The Poet's Guide to Food, Drink, & Desire

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Beverages & Wine

Stephen F. Austin University Press

"This book is a brouhaha of fun and cleverness, where many of the poems are double-edged with humor and lasting wisdom. ... These poems are delivered with the perfect clarity of everyday language."
 ―The Cafe Review
 "Brewer is the most consistently dark-side-of-the-moon poet around...his...athletic style exactly suits the subject."
 ―Hugh Fox, Small Press Review (Review of Presently A Beast)
 "I love the edgy laughter I hear on almost every page...There's a 'camaraderie of betrayal, lust, and song'."
 ―David Kirby

Devilfish

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