/ Dan Memmolo / Beat Surrender /
Dan Memmolo is equal parts wiseacre and soothsayer, part gyrating Elvis impersonator, part tender magician extracting bouquets from a depthless hat. I've been a fan of his work for years. BEAT SURRENDER sizzles with energy, humor, and insight, with poems I wish I'd written. How can "a world so wrong...feel so right"? Listen carefully. This highwire of a chapbook explains it all.
--Gaylord Brewer
Let me end as I began, with a book from a big press and one from a little one. The one is Albert Goldbarth's "The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007" (Graywolf, $26), and the other is Dan Memmolo's "Beat Surrender" (Main Street Rag, $7). There are 340 pages of Goldbarth's intoxicating poems in the first, only 30 of Memmolo's sweet, moony musings in the second. Yet each book gave me reams of pleasure.
--David Kirby, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 1, 2007
A finalist in Main Street Rag Publishing's annual chapbook contest, BEAT SURRENDER was chosen to appear as part of their Editor's Choice Chapbook Series.
Available from Main Street Rag Publishing.