Proletariat Sunrise - Softcover

Proletariat Sunrise instructs us that “the book is an act of discovery.” Life’s indefinite scale manifest in the transcendental natural world, “time becomes briefly tangible in just/a smattering of orange leaves”. Wyman mines those everyday liminal spaces to reveal “the underlying syntax //of our days,” to give us more than measure, meaning exceeding all expectations, discovery. In a culture “where visionary becomes synonymous/with consumption,” Proletariat Sunrise is the antidote. This is a beautiful, rewarding book that will “bring you as far as the mind/can reach.”
Jess Mynes, author of One Anthem

In the first poem from David Wyman’s remarkable debut collection Proletariat Sunrise, a father gives his daughter “a squall of possibilities.” Readers, too, are treated to all that this wise poet has collected—from games with missing pieces to birds nesting in the margins of a book. This book has been constructed from loss, regret, and missed opportunities, like “a cowboy movie that turns out to be / a beer commercial,” but as Wyman reminds us, “the heart can repair / itself.” Proletariat Sunrise is both a call to arms, asking us like Walt Whitman to “Awake and sing,” but also reminding us like Faulkner to “expect a light December rain signifying repression.” Yet, nothing is random: “Even in the shiny apocalyptic dawn / there’s a spontaneous ordering.” Wyman’s precise imagery and astute imagination has ordered the world in such a way that readers putting down the book after the final poem will find that “the light burns longer than is expected.”
Michelle Valois, author of My Found Vocabulary

This remarkable debut engages with some of the central questions and disillusionments of our time. With its unflinching insights, flashes of humor and intense, startling imagery, Proletariat Sunrise is a lament for all that’s been lost in America’s virtual, slogan-ridden landscape but also a celebration of moments of irreducible beauty and even a call to action of sorts. These intricate, explosive, lyrical poems force the reader to examine the conflicting impulses this surreal yet oh-so-accurate depiction evokes—“the desire to run away yoked / to the brand of shoes you run / away in”—without ever lapsing into an easy cynicism. “Even in the shiny apocalyptic dawn, / there’s a spontaneous ordering / guided by aspects of a hidden self.” It’s that spark of banked possibility that energizes and animates the collection as a whole.
Lori Lamothe, author of Trace Elements