Kerry Shawn Keys
Perfectbound paperback, ISBN:  978-0-9800081-4-2, 64 pgs., $12.95

Currently Out of Print

In his new collection of playful short poems, Book Of Beasts, poet Kerry Keys presents us with the ultimate bestiary.  Surrealistic imagery combines with keen word-play in Keys’ poems, to tickle, tantalize and tease us beyond rationality into the cartoon world of his wild imagination.  Nothing is as it appears in the Keys universe, yet it parallels and satirizes reality.  These poems are witty and lyrically intense poem-toys, worth repeated readings for their entertainment value.

“Keys is a nature poet both in his closeness to and his terrific knowledge of the things of the natural world, and in his deliberate and absurdist anthropomorphization of those things…He is a teacher, a fable-monger, even a moralist.”                 -Gerald Stern

“This is a book of drunken, Rabelaisian, who-gives-a-shit poetry songs to the beasts in all of us, mad metamorphoses of pinheads and angels, a comic graffiti of sorts worthy of some ancient Roman cynic or emperor in a stupor.”                  -Michael Jennings

“A piquant tangle of transformations, Kerry Keys’ bestiary jangles any conception of a properly ordered universe. Its wit and truth is sauce fit for the goose or the gander or that bittersweet bit of the beast in all of us.”                   – J. C. Todd

“Despite the playful appearance of its cover art, Book of Beasts is most assuredly not a poetry book for children – the raw, severe emotion of its brief, free-verse poems is coarsely candid about the darker side of life and human nature.  A vividly powerful reading experience, recommended for anyone who likes to experience poetry with a kick.”                -Margaret Lane in The Midwest Book Review