ARTSPEAK RADIO presents, Dennis Etzel Jr., Sara Nicole Glass aka MissConception, Annie Raab, & Godfrey Riddle with ArtsKC

Dennis Etzel Jr. discusses his latest book, My Secret Wars of 1984, released by BlazeVOX books, was a finalist of the 2012 1913 Press First Book Award, chosen by Rae Armantrout, a finalist of the 2013 SpringGun Press Open Manuscript Reading, a semi-finalist of the 2013 Subito Press Poetry Contest, and published in so many literary journals like 1913, DIAGRAM, Horse Less Review, Tarpaulin Sky, and Fact-Simile. In its entirety, My Secret Wars of 1984 is an alphabetized 366-sentence conceptual poetry-memoir collage, using texts from the year 1984 (Lyn Hejinian, Ronald Johnson, bell hooks, Marvel Comics, Dungeons & Dragons, President Reagan, etc.) with sentences of my own—within the context of political and personal struggles of that time (my mother coming out in the midst of living in a conservative Catholic neighborhood, the threat of nuclear war, the recession, etc.). www.dennisetzeljr.com To read My Secret Wars of 1984 is to ride an old wooden rollercoaster through a spacious gallery of stained-glass windows, all their colorful shards having been stolen, shattered, then chewed into shape: what we have here are gorgeous and wise assemblages of sharp, scavenged graffiti. Ricocheting from Pac-Man to Topeka to institutional structures to AIDS awareness to Reagan, Dennis…