Alum Eric Paul’s A Popular Place to Explode Reviewed at The Literary Review

Alum Eric Paul’s A Popular Place to Explode (Heartworm Press, 2015) was recently reviewed at The Literary Review. 

Reviewer Heather Lang writes:

Eric Paul has created a world in which it is okay to stare at the sun, or the man with “fork-and-knife hands” who is “surviving on a diet of near-death experiences,” or even “The Mirror Man and Me” (and, as implied by this title, yourself). In fact, the collection’s own distinctive identity is so strong that it truly is deserving of its own time and space: A Popular Place To Explode.

In a discussion with Heartworm Press, Eric Paul states:

For me, the collection examines  failure in a failing place. The poems are inspired by the psychology of every broken and forgotten neighborhood I grew up in  and continue to live in as an adulthood.  These neighborhoods breed a certain type of crazy. With A Popular Place To Explode I tried to channel this very odd, yet specific state of mind. I wanted to unearth the humor, the anxiety, the anger, the sadness, and occasional beauty of it all.