\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eI'm No Longer Troubled by the Extravagance \u003c/I\u003eis a collection of poems that assign new meanings to the people and things of the past. The book moves in three sections through a fantastic landscape that maps human fragility. The poems in the first section speak to matters of the heart\u0026#8212;intimacy and loss\u0026#8212;punctuated by lovers who leave. The second section is comprised of prose poems chronicling misadventures and conspiracies: Russian spies on Wilshire Boulevard, artichokes that mate for life, and secret photographs of God. Finally, the third section pans out from individual experience, hosting the collective in fable-like reflections. Together, the poems in \u003ci\u003eExtravagance \u003c/I\u003emark with fragile acceptance the surreal extravagance of being alive.\u003c/P\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Relentless\u003c/B\u003e\u003c/P\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOne day we'll know how long\u003cbr\u003ethe dead have to be dead\u003cbr\u003ebefore they feel hunger.\u003cbr\u003eOne day it'll be summer forever.\u003cbr\u003eIn the meantime, the weather,\u003cbr\u003elooking for its cue, keeps an eye on me;\u003cbr\u003eand I keep whatever money's in my pocket\u003cbr\u003ecrumpled in a ball. A relentless\u003cbr\u003eresponsibility dogs me, and the funny thing\u003cbr\u003eis, these are the lyrics to a happy song.\u003cbr\u003eGo ahead, tap your foot,\u003cbr\u003esnap your fingers.\u003cbr\u003eWe're roasting a pig in the yard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/I\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRick Bursky \u003c/B\u003eis the author of \u003ci\u003eDeath Obscura \u003c/I\u003e(Sarabande Books, 2010) and \u003ci\u003eThe Soup of Something Missing \u003c/I\u003e(Bear Star Press, 2004), winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize. He lives in Los Angeles where he works in advertising and teaches poetry in the UCLA Extension Writer's Program.\u003c/div\u003e
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