Deep State Come Shining
by Brad Liening

“Brad Liening’s latest collection marries a Midwestern vernacular of the self with flares of perception illuminat- ing the grand vistas as well as the tiny crevices of our es- tranged and estranging American experience. By turns wry and deadpan, poignant and apocalyptic, his poems hang onto secrets while they feed on faithless internet promis- es, humdrum analog comforts like grocery-shopping and the neighborhood bar, and venal politicians and their vast humbuggery. Liening’s agile lines collide like children’s bumper cars, they go any which way: ‘and the cops / twirl their hooks / to a beat only / they can hear.’ Our moment indeed.” 

– Carl Skoggard, translator of Sonnets by Walter Benjamin