Gatza, Geoffrey: Self Geofferential

BlazeVOX, paperback Publication Date: February 15, 2025 Publisher Marketing:  Geoffrey Gatza’s Self Geofferential brings together text and visual work in variations of what it means both to live in one’s imagination and outward in one’s time, that is, to live in Kenmore, its enchanting autumn leaves. In “America” Gatza writes: “America is in decline once again, but you cannot see it from here, You must go around the corner, then down a block to Buffalo to see it. To see America in decline you must leave the imagined world behind. To see America, you must leave your home, no longer write poetry, and live.” Gatza’s work offers an important alternative to how easily any human can slip to cruelty. Here is a sweetness, an alert sensing of the world and creatures all around if we care to notice. Attentiveness. His poems call out: Come live and re-live a fairy tale world, that magic place of terror and extraordinary shape-shifts, where bully brothers are de-fanged, mean sisters deflected, and