Psychosis in the Produce Department

Named the ‘Nearly undisputed Empress of Southern California poetry,’ Laurel Ann Bogen writes poetry for those who think they don’t like poetry. The accessible and relevant poems in Psychosis in the Produce Department—which can be both witty and intense—will make believers of us all.

Psychosis in the Produce Department: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2015 gathers the best work from Laurel Ann Bogen’s previous ten books as well as new and unpublished poetry. Ranging in themes as diverse as horrific beauty and exquisite madness, dysfunctional families, love and anti-love, life in Los Angeles and Hollywood, and growing up as a Baby Boomer, these poems offer sly, humorous, surreal and most crucially, accessible—genre-busting work that can only be called Vintage Bogen.

Readers are also given the unique opportunity to experience the full power of Bogen’s critically acclaimed poetry performance through ten included QR codes that link to audio files of select poems in the collection.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Laurel Ann Bogen’s poems are lethal and smoking. If she is often painfully conscious at what we do to each other in the name of love, her poems are also rambunctious insignias of hope and courage. Psychosis in the Produce Department is an exuberant mix of human passions, a collection of poems that are at once mad with voltage and utterly sane. . . .a great pleasure to read.”—Steve Kowit