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Monster Zero Jay Snodgrass 0-9709342-6-2 $13.00 ©2002 order this title       Jay Snodgrass was born in Florida, and grew up on Yokota Air Base in Japan. He received his MFA from Florida International University in 2002. He lives with his wife, Kristine, in Miami, Florida.       If you doubt the holy combination of Hollywood camp and absolutely credible lyricism, read these poems. In his wonderful first collection, Monster Zero, Jay Snodgrass endows emptiness with a shape. This bold, confident, and original book is the poetic equivalent of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. —Tracy Philpot, Judge 2002 Elixir Press Book Awards     In these monster-out-of-water tales, a young American, growing up an Army brat in Japan, develops a relationship with a slimy green creature that helps him to come to grips with Hiroshima, Oppenheimer, and his family. Jay Snodgrass's Monster Zero is a touching funhouse of a book in which pop culture mirrors pop psychology, in which God mirrors Godzilla. —Denise Duhamel	That Godzilla should rise to walk among us in the guise of these inventive and entertaining poems need not, in our post-millennial times, come as a complete surprise; that Godzilla's quest, having so arisen, should be not the smashing of hapless pop-culture icons but rather a profound search for self-knowledge, an investigation of cultural and personal identity, is the brilliant insight at the heart of Monster Zero. Jay Snodgrass's first book is of visceral immediacy and staying power. —Campbell McGrath     In Monster Zero, Jay Snodgrass attempts a wry redemption drawn from the cultural detritus left in the ashes of the apocalypse, and succeeds with astonishing grace. —William Tester
from Monster Zero
First Confession Algebra The year they showed us the movie The Day After, About surviving a nuclear war, all my expectations About the future vaporized. At the junior high I went to on an airbase In Tokyo they were nice to me And let me gently slip through the cracks. I remember the light coming through the windows Of the school and the sound of airplanes. One day there was an earthquake and the kid who Sat next to me in Algebra had a seizure. All I could do Was stand there pointing at him with one hand, the Other covering my mouth while the teacher tried To put his wallet between the kid's teeth. I felt like I had been let in on a secret everyone else was kept In the dark about. When I confessed to another Student that I was afraid of the end of the world, He bought me a heavy codeine Syrup from a chemist downtown and I got lost In the mountains until I graduated. Later, when I Drove off in my father's car there was a light Coming from the fields, the rows and rows Of tea bushes, it brushed at the mist in the lower Places until the whole world just shined. At school I learned that an equation Is when everything on both sides of the equal sign Balances. After a while I stopped Crying about the things I couldn't change. After a while the fatigue in my heart lifted So that airplanes didn't sound like Bombers anymore. Now they speak to me About their love for light, and when I hear them I nod, knowing that theirs is a doomed romance.