The Charnel House on Joyce Kilmer Avenue

At first glance, New York poet Rob Cook's surreal prose might unnerve an unsuspecting reader. Cook has found a voice that is so precisely his own, new rhythms, new rhymes, that his world may appear foreign at first. Nothing could be further from the truth. LAST WINDOW IN THE PUNK HOTEL rants surreal but you'll find yourself tied to its purposes again and again. Cook's language is its own guide and shortly into reading LAST WINDOW IN THE PUNK HOTEL the reader finds themselves making the same leaps of faith as Cook, drawn into his intelligent will, a resident, if you will, at Cooks' Hotel.--Michael Dennis

Eschewing neat closures, Cook creates poetry that arguably compose one long gesture, the sections open to and echoing each other, all held together by the pain of a unblinking awareness as well as by a ubiquitous freshness in the writing--if Cook sees a worn linguistic or perceptual path in front of him, he always veers off in a new direction that challenges both himself and his reader. Fueled by a deep dismay, the writing goes beyond Surrealism, for Breton's 'astonish me' is no longer sufficient; the many contemporary outrages of Cook's 'always lurking, indefinable country' require instead a poetic that can register the shock of 'castrated hymns' and 'the statues of sharks inside our mouths.'--Philip Dacey