Glass Is Really a Liquid

ISBN: 978-0-9826000-1-6
Publication Date: October 2010
142 pages
$16.99

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What People are Saying about Glass Is Really a Liquid:


Material (as in’ concrete’: glassine — O liquid!) but abstract, say Miro in dialogue with Picasso. That is they’re pretty painterly, the poems, with images that flow past one changing into words . . . pixels . . . serifs. Domestic, lyric, amorous — well why not? “Cracked, however, like the liberty bell.” One can actually read them and be there, just reading, seeing (like you’re really there, really really there. You get to stay yourself.) Steinlike (as in glasses), stained. Stunning. His best book yet.
—Alice Notley

Glass Is Really a Liquid implicates more than one common substance in its continuous, polymath-eyed onslaught of negotiations of weird space: he unmasks hidden kitchens, pistols in napkins, a lurking way of “progressive sleep.” Gestures and feelings in these indexed syntaxes turn to colors, shapes, ideas. “It’s the new year, so everyone drives in the wrong direction,” a poem intones just before its speaker gets shot at by a helicopter “ammo pulsing 3 or 4 or 5 or blue.” In the hypercolor wake of all its gunfire, left wide open, the book still carries on, magnetizing in the same breath as its syllabic destruction a new Bruce Covey skinsuit around the reader’s body, equal parts Holy Shit! and Ouch!
—Blake Butler

In Glass Is Really a Liquid, Bruce Covey presents puzzles in poetry so perfectly constructed so that we may come to find that things are not always as they seem. The ways in which he uncovers and recovers discovery and loss allow us to see as he sees and, like him, "hope the clouds have / Answers hope the clouds have." To read these poems is to embark on a "a beautiful visit, a beautiful injection" of playful artifice but also heartbreaking insight. These poems are so much about this world; they are so much about the next one, too, where "all the little / Animals might congregate after." It's sure to be a lovely affair because Bruce has taken us there.
—Jenny Boully

Bruce Covey’s Glass Is Really a Liquid begins in the aftermath of a catastrophic loss, in a vivid state of stunnedness not unlike that of shock. Poignantly and precisely, Covey catalogs the indefinable aftermath, of what remains for the thwarted left-behind: “a cardboard city full of weeds...” or “stale bread...” [with] “...Marshmallow Fluff on it.” These are poems are expansive, passionate, instinctual, intelligent and funny—crafted as tightly as ski mask.
—Jennifer L. Knox

"Three ice tea & the wave of the future" is a fair example of the things to be found in Bruce Covey's "Restaurant," and throughout his poetry. Or how about "buttonholes / & boxes, stomachs & teeth, awaiting / Fulfillment from a good marketing plan"? Everything in the universe is getting along with each other, or maybe not, but somehow moving forward. "Touch it & burn, but be saved."
—John Ashbery


"The poems in Glass Is Really a Liquid define particular moments of our lives and identities with original, uncanny precision (“the picnic part of you”; “you like it all, wish to travel / With the smoke of the blown candles wishing // This fabulous birthday wasn’t someone else’s last”). And they capture the absurdities of our reality, well, absurdly: “Breezes the train I can reach I can clip the hedge quickly, the / one with whom we are timorous & chafing tuff tonight. Which / one’s art’s? The circle at the end of the lap.”)."
—Sima Rabinowitz reviews Glass Is Really a Liquid at NewPages




100 Most (Female)

V-Thing—Isn’t that crazy? A little bit of white, a bit of an edge,
Being touched is refreshing when you don’t impress secondary skin.
Where I was crying, at war through moves, teeth fixed, ten years,
“My lucky regimen is effortless,” says the doctor we hired.
Wow! Since then, not overly glam, six-minute curling kind of color,
An iron time back in, secret weapon cheerleader! Voluptuous
Impurities aren’t always compatible! Bravo pours boobs,
A cannon, namesake perfume! Omigod, tiny! A little junk,
A little carrot juice, lots of water mellows into earthy cream.
Blossoming off the wall is not so great. Spilling happened
To me last week, touching up the game, shrugs, has a fan club
With a large mirror, always looking at the flaws. It must
Have been a battery, take that, without defined eyes, off.
Zoom-in love, no re-touching, chocolaty, messed-up heavens!
Hot is sort of over! Let’s cut some bangs! A pushy complex,
Boxes and buns, she’s funny, torn-up pretty. Thanks!
Showered, injected, and clean, I’m like a piece of cherry pie:
I can’t figure out my sacrifice, what’s distributed well!


100 Most (Male)

Away with melting? That’s not vanity!
Bring back the spiked hat, razor! A glow,
Whiten them, come quickly the last few months
All right? Anatomy’s picked out already—
The same pair of jeans, bobbing for apples
In a volcano. Charcoal circles smudge
The switch—as soft as a nightmare—
The scientific cut—champions of tragedy—
The 11th red paisley. Look: The old hulk
Can still draw a gasp. Plenty prom,
The same formulaic rain. Whatever
Oil’s in the cabinet, it’s kind of like a runway.
Cheesy but true, I love her butt!
Her butt, her butt, her sleepy butt!
Thirty feet mid-tempo, with diamond,
He’s never funky shut into the closet.
A surgeon toy, or bright, painting,
Very well, trumps the starched white shirt.