Books by David Koehn

"Scatterplot navigates the landscape of imagination through a series of variations on being lost-and found. Koehn's investigations allow the failures of consciousness, the gaps in the knowable, as he grapples with a sensory terrain perceivable in the shadow of natural history and the glow of the family room TV. Here is a father and son walking the sloughs of the California Delta through the mayhem of a world dismissive of, but requiring, love. The work diagrams connections from media, art, film, music, nature, history, and details about members of his family into a web of coordinates forming constellations of beauty and tragedy. From the music of Bad Brains to the life-cycle of the Tongue Eating Louse to the deconstruction of Mutant Mania toys to the talking poems of David Antin to the suicide of Anthony Bourdain - the work details both how this writer embraces the present, and takes responsibility for his insufficiencies and fiascos, in a world so full of imperfection one can't but both laugh and cry. In what amount to a mix of experiments - erasures, surreal narratives, collage, walking/talking poems, and more - the delta between right now and forever seems inextricably present and pleasurably mixed. Wild vulnerability, infinitely odd observation, and uninhibited daring inhabit these poems"--