Cry Baby Mystic

Daniel Tiffany Free Verse Editions Edited by Jon Thompson Information and Pricing 978-1-64317-202-6 (paperback, $14.99); 978-1-64317-203-3 (PDF, $9.99) © 2021 by Parlor Press, 108 pages Bookstores: Order by fax, mail, or phone. See our "Sales and Ordering Page" for details. Reviews and Interviews Mark Scroggins, "A Medieval Mystic as a Muse for Two Poets," Hyperallergic, 15 Sept. 2021. Gray Palmer, Colorado Review, 16 Sept. 2021. Rain Taxi Review, vol. 6, no. 2, Summer 2021. "A Reader’s Diary: As Tears Go By" by Barry Schwabsky. Tourniquet Review. 1 April 2021. Review by Norman Finkelstein. Restless Messengers: Poetry in Review. 27 March 2021. "A Coherent Organism of Cravings and Fears: Daniel Tiffany Interviewed by Madison McCartha." BOMB, 17 Mar. 2021. “‘Do we trust the voice?’: An Interview with Daniel Tiffany & a Folio of New Work” – curated by Henk Rossouw. Tupelo Quarterly, 14 Nov. 2020. What People Are Saying In Daniel Tiffany’s Cry Baby Mystic, somatic questions join hands in a waltz of ragged secrets and placards of reborn language, hidden police, and scratchy names. Trembling voices crawl out from the page and then right into us — or do they climb out of us and into the scene? — growing horse veins on their necks and Googling the scene (as they speak). — Sara Deniz Akant, author of Babette Daniel Tiffany is a true virtuoso. His taut syllabics incorporate a range of idioms, at once demotic and high–flown; the sprung line breaks — the interruptions and stutterings — sharpen consciousness. The poem’s cry–baby–mystic voice does no one’s bidding and thereby thrills the muses. In tone and method and subject, Tiffany courts the deep end; the poem opens up a sinkhole on every page, and out of this well, a Hölderlin–esque outpouring of divine moodiness makes itself heard. — Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Figure It Out The speculative drive of Daniel Tiffany’s inventive book–length poem offers a flurry of suspicions, forays, wisdoms. Micro–conversations spin up into our field of listening, then just as quickly fade away. Though the approach is playful, the beauty in this book is serious and emerges in a seriously beautiful way. Down–pressers and Mobb Deep make an appearance! And there is pain, a calling out in exasperation, celebration, visionary joy. — Shane Book, author of Congotronic, finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize Margery Kempe won’t stop crying and no one can do anything about it. Hyper–formal and bent out of shape, Cry Baby Mystic turns into the song of a “mud oboe” that leaves us hushed, “hunched,” in the dark. — Keith Tuma, author of Climbing into the Orchestra About This Book Bobbing alongside Margery Kempe—an illiterate medieval mystic who dictated the first autobiography in English—the ragged voice of Cry Baby Mystic finds itself drawn into strange predicaments that are not its own and ferried into abandoned spaces by the gearing of stardom and shame. The revolving sentences overheard by the reader--a muffled chorus of Brechtian aftershocks--survive only as traces of sorrow now craved by all who have known it: sound gossiping the unsound, the excess of the pilgrim. A person climbs out and never comes home. About the Author Daniel Tiffany is the author of five previous full-length collections of poetry, including Puppet Wardrobe (Parlor Press, 2006), Privado (Action Books, 2010), The Dandelion Clock (Tinfish, 2010), and Neptune Park (Omnidawn, 2013), along with chapbooks from Oystercatcher Press and Noemi. Poems and documentary materials from his collection, The Work-Shy (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), which appeared under the signature of BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP, have been adapted for theater and incorporated into museum exhibitions across the U.S. Tiffany's poetry has appeared in journals such as Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, jubilat, Lana Turner, Fence, Iowa Review, Volt, Bomb, Chicago Review, Brooklyn Rail, and many others. In addition, five volumes of his literary criticism have been published by presses including Harvard and Johns Hopkins, as well as the University of Chicago and the University of California. He is the author of the entry on “Lyric Poetry” in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literature. Apart from his own writing, he has published translations from French, Greek, and Italian writers. He is a recipient of the Berlin Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Berlin. danieltiffany.com