<DIV>Merging the spirits of Don Quixote, Shakespearean fools, Theodore Roethke, Frank O&rsquo;Hara, James Merrill, and the Marx Brothers, Zach Savich&rsquo;s first book does more than showcase the innovative fluency of its roving forms and moods: these poetic hybrids are not hothouse blossoms but minotaurs. With ebullient intelligence and high-stakes insistence on the panic, lust, and suffering of the sensual world, <i>Full Catastrophe Living</i> uses the self as an instrument to investigate art, love, and the hardest honesty. <br> <br> In meditations, songs, slapstick sequences, sonnets, narratives, and tightly carved fragments, Savich explores the conflicts between romance and reality, between inventing a new world and staying true to this one. Relishing both traditional and experimental poetics, he takes refreshing, ecumenical risks to show the &ldquo;strange grace / of bells that ring with a rag&rsquo;s polishing.&rdquo; Like a Fourth of July band conductor guiding planes to land, his poetic wit alters what&rsquo;s real. This book will change the ways that readers think about poetry, language&rsquo;s expressive capacity, and the robust world around us.<br> </DIV>