Harsh Realm: My 1990s

“All I’ve ever done is sing along,” writes Daniel Nester in Harsh Realm. Equal parts music ethnography, punk protest, and homage to the New York School, this ingenious collection takes us on a rollicking tour of the “layered decade” of the 90s to the present day with remixed poems that refuse nostalgia and ironic detachment to deliver up the real an anthem with the power to save. —Virginia Konchan Daniel Nester’s Harsh Realm is a mixtape of poems weirdly paired with songs of the time, like playing TLC’s “Waterfalls” on repeat while waiting for the results of his first AIDS test. Nester describes with love the shifting trends in 90s music, and explores his own emerging sense of self, part young poser, part earnest observer of the New York City poetry and punk scenes. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to an Irish bar in the West Village, Nester details with humor and vulnerability his own emergence into adulthood. Word to your mother. —Tracey Knapp Daniel Nester’s Harsh Realm is a masterpiece of poetic time travel that lets us breathe differently, breathe into a time that has no beginning or middle or end; time that is an orb of music and emotion and language and heartbeat and that comes out of an unquenchable desire to love. Daniel Nester is working at his highest poetic powers in these poems. —Matthew Lippman (from the foreword) Daniel Nester is a poet, nonfiction writer, teacher, and editor. His previous books include Shader, a memoir; How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous nonfiction; The Incredible Sestina Anthology, which he edited; and the poetry collection The History of My World Tonight. His first two books, God Save My A Tribute and God Save My Queen The Show Must Go On, are hybrid collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Barrelhouse, The Hopkins Review, Word For/Word, Court Green, Love’s Executive Order, and other publications.