Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion is a collection of found poems composed of the words of professional athletes.

The content of post-game interviews and sports chatter is so often meaningless, if not insufferable, and yet there are athletes like Metta World Peace who transcend lame clichés and rote patter, who use language in surprising ways, who can be funny and shocking and insightful and alarmingly sincere — pure poetry. Muhammad Ali offered dazzling displays of lexical wizardry, and Allen Iverson’s infamous “practice” rant shifted the post-game press conference from the banal to the absurd.

This book is a celebration of these rare and exceptional moments. Various poetic forms and line-breaks highlight — or, in the words of Deion Sanders, “deem to set a candor on” — the sophisticated, sublime, and surprising performances of language made by professional athletes.

Jeff Parker’s books include Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal, the novel Ovenman, and the short story collection The Taste of Penny. He teaches in the M.F.A. program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he lives.

Pasha Malla is the author of four books, which have been listed for or won the Commonwealth Prize, the Dublin-IMPAC Literary Award, the Giller Prize, and the Trillium Book Award. He's the winner of two National Magazine Awards for humor writing and an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction. He lives in Toronto.

Nathan McKee is an artist and illustrator who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. McKee’s illustrations and paper cutouts utilize simple lines and flat color, and are inspired by comics, sports, music and other elements of popular culture. His works have been included in exhibitions in Portland, OR, Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Boston and Switzerland. He runs the websites fakeyrowndeath.com & Makemtakem.com & has studied at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.