I'M SO BRIGHT AND LONELY TONIGHT, by Casey Harloe

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

I’M SO BRIGHT AND LONELY TONIGHT is a search for something ultimately not there. Rooted in Midwest imagery, the author writes about boredom and stagnancy, pining a future ostensibly unobtainable but simultaneously fearful of its inevitable arrival. This is a collection about / for / based in Cincinnati- a city adored and scorned, an attempt to find equilibrium in their residency.

I’M SO BRIGHT AND LONELY TONIGHT addresses themes of romantic endeavors and their failures, complicated dynamics with the self, solitude. The way the world can be intolerable or unable to digest. Trying to cross sidewalks and clock in to reality, entertain the current projections, stimulate excitement even in the midst of quotidian mundanity.

This chapbook is a focus on absence, dwelling, analysis upon present circumstances, lacking tools necessary to alter the present and reform tendencies to exist skeptically, cautiously. Engage the reader in various modes of curiosity – what succeeds or fails to be present – what appears to disappear – what is worth our attention and what is best to abandon.

Casey Harloe lives and writes in Cincinnati. She is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Jean Chimsky Poetry Prize. In her free time she leads writing workshops and open mics at Household Books. Her work has been published in Poets.org, DIALOGIST, Belmont Review, Honey Literary, BRUISER, and elsewhere.