Death Obscura

A surreality that is lived in--populated by the death-obsessed, yet distracted by levity--Death Obscura is a poetry of glimpses. In these dark fragments, narratives are observed through the curtains. You could call Rick Bursky’s work California Gothic, inhabiting a moody Los Angeles where we move carefully or brazenly, well aware that the neighbors are watching. Death Obscura is Bursky's second collection, and it strikes the perfect balance between off-hand and insistent, ordinary and absurd. This is a sly, moving, and irresistible read.

Rick Bursky was born and raised in New York City. Immediately following high school, he spent four years as a paratrooper in the army, and later earned a BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. His first full-length collection of poems, The Soup of Something Missing, was published by Bear Star Press (2004) after winning the Dorothy Brunsmen Poetry Prize. Hollyridge Press published his chapbook, The Invention of Fiction. His poems have appeared in many journals including American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Southern Review, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, Shenandoah, and New Letters. Bursky works in advertising and teaches poetry at UCLA Extension and lives in Los Angeles.