The Cut Worm

Douglas Korb, a frequent contributor to Barrelhouse side project Growler, has a new chapbook out called The Cut Worm from Bright Hill Press. Here's what people are saying.

Two lines from William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" served as inspiration for both the title of The Cut Worm and the book's division into three sections: "The cut worm forgives the plow" and "In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter, enjoy." The book explores innocence, experience, and desire.

"The Cut Worm reads like a sensible dream. In it, the poet drifts as son, husband, and amazed poetic citizen. Douglas Korb's world of memory and family and observation is all faintly humorous, faintly rapturous. He answers the world directly with its own details."—Chris Green

"The domicile, the body: these are ever under siege in Douglas Korb's corpus. Nor is there any real sense of escape, only the courage to face unpleasantness while shoring up some humor along the way. The lyric poem, then, as a means to restoring a little peace."—Timothy Liu