JOHN MADERA—Writer, Editor, Publisher

Andrew Joron’s poetry marvelously fuses scientific speculation and philosophical inquiry with an acute attention to the sonic textures of language, so you can imagine how delighted I am to share Joron’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“There is no mad science like poetry: John Madera’s Nomad Science proves it. These poems migrate through the pores of lived experience, collecting evidence that rupture and rapture are the same. Using his own version of poetic science, Madera has discovered how to sing upon the precipice of a system blinking red. Rippling with sonic and semantic interplay, driven by ecstatic doubt, Madera’s work operates at multiple levels, from the socio-personal to the cosmic. Against disaster, this poet takes the wide view: ‘To be at the end of the world,’ Madera writes, ‘is to be at the beginning / Of another one.’”
—Andrew Joron, author of many books, including O0, The Absolute Letter, Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems, The Sound Mirror, and The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose

I’ve long loved Rae Armantrout’s ingenious, lyrical, witty, probing poems, so you can imagine my great delight to share Armantrout’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“In his poem ‘No Things but in Ideas,’ John Madera identifies first as a succulent, then as spider plant twisting itself toward a distant light. There’s something appealingly modest and persistent in this image. It is also an apt way to describe what Madera does in Nomad Science as a whole: his work here acknowledges death but seeks out life-forwarding currents in an often otherwise hostile environment. We need more of that.”
—Rae Armantrout, author of many books, including Go Figure, Finalists, Conjure, and Versed (winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry)

Rigoberto González‘s vital, lyrical, syncretic writing across the genres always inspires, so you can imagine my immense delight to share González’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“Each of John Madera’s poems is a linguistic journey inviting us to ponder our everyday encounters with the human and the machine, and to elevate them into the imaginative, intelligent landscape of language and knowledge. Nomad Science is playful, cerebral, and altogether brilliant.”
—Rigoberto González, author of many books, including To the Boy Who Was Night, The Book of Ruin, and Unpeopled Eden

I’ve long reveled in Cole Swensen‘s brilliant, luminous, and profoundly intro- and extrospective writing, so you can imagine my extreme delight to share Swensen’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“These clear musings take an ambling gait, reflecting a mind both pensive and piercing, exuding a calm, yet committed attention to the things of this world. Madera ponders the big questions, such as existence and the Milky Way, but also the small ones—the Oxford comma and invisible pathogens—and all by way of their precise details. There’s a generous exactitude to the whole, which gives our world back to us, once again marvelously strange.”
—Cole Swensen, author of many books, including most recently And And And, Art in Time, On Walking On, and Landscapes on a Train