FAKE NEWS POEMS by Martin Ott

In an era of “alternative facts,” where our POTUS has labeled the press the enemy of the people and coined the term “fake news,” truth and lies are duking it out in a battle for the soul of our country.

In Martin Ott’s groundbreaking FAKE NEWS POEMS – 2017 Year in Review, 52 Weeks, 52 headlines, 52 poems, he uses news headlines as launch pads for poems that are political, personal, and powerfully encapsulate the themes of 2017.

In this book of news poems, you’ll find retired fortune cookie writers, liberated circus animals, eclipses and natural disasters, Russian meddling, global warming, Charles Manson, self-driving cars, fire and fury, alien spaceships, and robot presidents.

The author uses the political landscape and breaking news as a prism to shine light on his own personal life and the lives of all of us living in these unusual times. Part art and part political resistance, FAKE NEWS POEMS is a guide to better understand the first year of the new age of Trump.

“William Carlos Williams famously wrote that ‘it is difficult to get the news from poems’ but poets like Martin Ott keep proving the limits of Williams’ vision. In his wildly strange Fake News Poems, Ott chronicles the first year of the Age of Trump that a series of stranger-than-fiction poetic news stories, each of which come to speak to the wider apocalyptic rumblings of a society–and a planet–seeming to come apart at the seams. As we run toward the singularity, sex robots, edited embryos, self-driving cars, spying dolls redefine the Anthropocene, but don’t stop us from swaddling guns, or cockroaches from sneaking into brains, or woodpeckers from cracking our car mirrors. We haven’t yet seen what we’ve become. We need poets like Ott to pay attention to the way in which the future is staring us in the face, and waiting for us to wake up.”

—Philip Metres
Author of Sand Opera

“Poetry has always sought to illuminate the mystery and wonder of the world, and Martin Ott’s wonderful Fake News Poems does just that. Set in a time where reality and fact have been challenged, brutalized, and systematically unwound, this book attempts to marvel at the complexities and simplicity of the human experience as we become increasingly unmoored. It’s an anchor in unsure times, an achievement we should all applaud and learn from.”

—Jared Yates Sexton
Author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: a Story of American Rage

“Martin Ott collects clickbait headlines and transmutes them into lyric truths.”

—Jesse Walker
Reason Books Editor and Author of The United States of Paranoia

“Inside the circuitry of daily brash, bogus American media and administrative onslaught, Martin Ott lassos the ludicrous and navigates deep existential waters, wielding the dreadful truth of personal and political material into lines of poetry that elicit both chuckles and sighs. Lest we forget we are embodied beings with soul, not to mention history and facts that need tending and preservation. For sanity, for survival, and to protest the reduction of meaning to ridiculous, trivial heights. This masterful writer succeeds in smashing rhetorical kitsch to smithereens, making a mighty reconstructed art of the inspected pieces that glitters with vulnerability, wit, and perceptive gravitas page after page. As insightful Ott points out: Love is not hard (and) It is a shelter from lies.”

—Michelle Bitting
Author of Broken Kingdom and The Couple Who Fell to Earth

“Merriam-Webster defines “news” as “a report of recent events.” So, can there be such a thing as “fake news”? We may never know. Political manipulators, radio loudmouths, and fringe lunatics with podcasts tell us what’s real and what isn’t, and we’re more than happy to leave the thinking to them. Websites seduce us with clickbait, and we say, “Thank you.” Martin Ott, however, is having none of it. In 52 poems, each a response to a genuine headline, he offers us 52 witty, poignant, and cynical commentaries that take on the madness and silliness assaulting us minute after minute. As somebody who spent his career in media relations, I’ll tell you what isn’t fake: the work in Martin’s smart new collection. Take a break from the 24-hour noise machines and spend some time with these poems. They’re as incisive as a New York Times op-ed.”

—Joel Allegretti
Rabbit Ears, TV Poems Editor and Author of Platypus

A former US Army interrogator and longtime resident of Los Angeles, Martin Ott has published eight books of poetry and fiction, most recently LESSONS IN CAMOUFLAGE, C&R Press, 2018. His first two poetry collections won the De Novo and Sandeen Prizes. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and fifteen anthologies.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 66 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-322-5