Poetry
Sad City
Craig’s debut poetry collection Sad City is soon to be released by BlazeVox Books. Sign up to his newsletter for the release date and alerts about readings, and visit BlazeVox:
what people say about my book
blaze vox
There are books that arrive quietly, and then there are books that feel like they’ve been living among us all along, watching, listening, working, carrying boxes up stairwells, standing at doors late at night, absorbing the weather of the city. Sad City, the new poetry collection by Craig Kite, belongs firmly to the latter…
Queens gazette
Honestly, writing poems is something I’ve always done compulsively since I was young. It’s like a safe place, or a portable sanctuary that goes with me everywhere I walk. I literally can’t help but write them. Although it sometimes feels like some strange sort of mental illness, poems are a place where…
Lisa haselton
In the poems “Brutalism” and “A Main Street of Only Chain Stores”, as in many of the poems in Sad City, I am playing with the tension that exists between urban, suburban, and rural communities in America. These areas are not only divided spatially, but by class divisions. We’re all aware of the ubiquitous tropes of the “coastal elite”…
don Yort
The La Mama reading, which was wrapping up, was amazing, One of the poets I had never heard before was Craig Kite whose words seemed to be part of the man who was speaking them, a real rhythm between the two. I asked Craig, afterward, if I could record him. He lives in Queens at the end of the N and W lines at Ditmars Avenue. It was worth the trip…
Taking aim at the foibles and quirks of our society, Kite uses our canned language to show us caught in the crosshairs of our own quotidian idiosyncrasies. There’s much affection and humor mixed in with the wry, tongue-in-cheek irony, and an overall playful bounce keeps it lively. From the Save-Mart to Ecclesiastes, Kite leaves no corner of our so-called civilization unexamined—a delightful and rollicking read.
Cole Swenson
Craig's music is so good! Check him out
Matt Scribble
The collection is at once comical and poignant, alienating and resonating, apocalyptic and ordinary—paradoxes wherein lie its beauty.
Javeria Hasnain
Craig Kite’s poems have a winning immediacy. With surgical irony, deep heart, and astounding imagination, Kite revels what it feels like to be alive at this moment. Poems such as “Brutalism” and “Quitting.” will be with us for a long time. Sad City is a superb collection.
Peter Campion
Delightfully biting cynicism drives these engaging, often hilarious, and always spot-on observations of our early 20th century socio-economic situation.
Cole Swenson