Catching Tigers in Red Weather

by Andrew Demcak

Poetry. CATCHING TIGERS IN RED WEATHER, winner of the Three Candles Press Open Book Award (selected by Joan Larkin), is a collection of poems by a new voice that combines montage cut-ups with an informing dialectic that gives us a wide array of contemporary American viewpoints. By turns playful and serious, he deftly embraces and criticizes a popular culture that is too complicated to dismiss with swift and simple comments. It is a book of rich rewards. "Andrew Demcak is a poet unafraid of the harrowing, sometimes revelatory nature of modern life. Above all, these poems evoke the moments when people come together, both in violent and romantic ways, and they also train a keen eye on the aftermaths of our partings. CATCHING TIGERS IN RED WEATHER will remind everyone who reads it that beauty and fear come into the world hand-in-hand. Like any significant poetry, it will alter its readers' perspectives forever"--Kaya Oakes.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2007

About the author

Andrew Demčák is an award-winning, American poet and novelist, the author of six poetry collections and eight Young Adult novels. His books have been featured by The American Library Association, Verse Daily, The Lambda Literary Foundation, The Best American Poetry, Kirkus Reviews, and Poets & Writers. He was selected to be the keynote speaker for the California Library Association's annual conference to celebrate his contributions to LGBTQ+ Young Adult literature.
He has been a finalist for the prestigious Dorset Poetry Prize, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, The Crazyhorse Poetry Award, and the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence in Poetry. He did win the Three Candles Press Open Book Award, selected by the phenomenal poet, Joan Larkin, for his first poetry collection, Catching Tigers in Red Weather (2007).

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Magician of Poetry

Andrew Demcak is a polished professional. Though his poems have appeared in many very fine journals, this appears to be his first published collection where the stage is his and his alone. His style is unique: each of the 66 poems is written in six stanzas of couplets and each poem lives on an individual page, and from this 'confinement' that would restrict other writers in scope of content and conveying a mood or atmosphere or short story, Demcak creates his magic.

The range of emotions and images and topics and observations he touches is so vast that Demcak is able to address any reader of poetry and enhance previous flights of thought with completely new visions. Equally at home in describing nature and people and memories of poets passed, he draws upon what seems like an endless vocabulary which he uses in ways that causes our infatuation with words to blossom with fresh meaning. An example:

'SLEEP IN THE MOJAVE DESERT
We doze and swelter in a comfortless
desert. Stars ignite the lengthy evening.

Crickets congregate in their armor-plate.
Grains of sand retain the day's heat. We lie

queerly here, objects of obsidian.
The rabbit's sad cry from owl talon.

The sky splits at sunup to dearer air,
cool dew gliding from the blue horizon,

the straight distance without road or address.
Noonday earthstones connecting dry lines,

guarding their pallid salts, where lizards creep
like firecats emerged from cinders.'

Extracting one poem from this bounty contained in CATCHING TIGERS IN RED WEATHER is almost cruel, so completely fresh is every poem and profound. Demcak is able to cross gender lines as well as any poet today as his LAST LOVE proves:

'So everything came into place, He tore
the gauze to the core of my boyhood,

sliding in while my eyelids turned plum.
His bitter mouth, the insistent red veil

of the Gaza sun, my thighs like twin doors
held open. I had chosen the closest

man, cut my bandages like a runner
testing his legs. I unfolded myself

a loose-petalled Narcissus, Anxious
for his erection, condomless, straining,

unaware that his body politic
was followed by the viral campaign.'

Andrew Demcak is an important new voice, a man who will surely change literature and the way we enter the unexplainable places that poetry finds and describes. This is a rich book of brilliant jewels. Highly recommended! Grady Harp

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Catching Tigers in Red Weather' is a soaring work of imagination - full of evocative and colorful language, sometimes brutal but always moving. An unforgettable read, it is highly recommended.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Demcak is a poet unafraid of the harrowing and sometimes revelatory nature of modern life. Above all, the poems in Catching Tigers in Red Weather evoke the moments when people come together, both in violent and romantic ways, and they also train a keen eye on the aftermaths of our partings. Catching Tigers in Red Weather will remind everyone who reads it that beauty and fear come into the world hand-in-hand. Like any significant poetry, it will alter its readers' perspectives forever.

[DemonKitty003]

I don't know much about this book but I'll read it I guess

[Chloe Archer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is not for everyone. It is far from what one may expect in poetry. The author throws around words like bouncing balls, depicting our society as flawed and broken, yet humorous and sometimes pleasant at the same time. Like fire and ice, black and white, sad and joyous, he creates intricate images with opposing meaning as an artist may create an abstract painting, where only the viewer can decipher its beauty.