FutureCycle Press Publishes Cycle of Poems on the Life and Music of Billie Holiday

Dec. 23, 2013 - PRLog -- FutureCycle Press (www.futurecycle.org) publishes Why Not Take All of Me: A Cycle of Poems on the Life and Music of Billie Holiday by scholar and poet Joel Peckham.

This small chapbook of narrative poems is a meditation on the life and music of one of the truly great artists of the twentieth century and an impressionistic exploration of the connection between personality, identity, celebrity and art. There are deliberate rough edges here and third-rail examinations of sex, race, gender, addiction and psychological dysfunction. Billie Holiday made no apologies for who she was or how she lived. In these poems, Joel Peckham, evokes her rich and vibrant personality with a music and passion worthy of his subject.

Joel Peckham is a poet, essayist, and literary scholar. He has published three other collections of poetry—The Heat of What Comes and nigthwalking from Pecan Grove Press and Movers and Shakers from Pudding House. His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle and The Southern Review. In 2012, his memoir, Resisting Elegy, appeared from Academy Chicago Publishers.

Why Not Take All of Me is now available in print-on-demand and Kindle editions on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Not-Take-All-Me/dp/1938853431/) and at the FutureCycle Press website (www.futurecycle.org).