Professor Clown on Parade - Rick Lupert

Rick Lupert’s 18th book – a collection of travel poetry written on the go in the wilds of Burlington, Vermont, Portland, Maine and Hartford Connecticut. Force of Nature, Rick Lupert, and his wise wife, Addie, have been let loose in the Northeast, and the result is poetic mayhem of the highest order. These poems chronicle the couple’s obsession with food, art, architecture, and each other over an action-packed 12-day roadtrip. “I’m following the Vermont food trail/and am about to pray to a donut,” Lupert confesses in “At the Cold Hollow Cider Mill.” A brilliant, beer-fogged take on America by one of the funniest, smartest poets around.

ps. These poems could also be construed as Lupert’s 293 page love letter to his wife. 

-Alexis Rhone Fancher, poetry editor, Cultural Weekly, seven-time Pushcart nominee

Every year I look forward to Rick and Addie’s summer vacation. Instead of a slide show or a lousy T-shirt I get another book of poems. What you have in your hands is a travelogue – the newest installment in a series of road books written by Rick Lupert, the minimalist Huell Howser of Van Nuys poetry. Lupert is a comedian with impeccable timing and a poet whose work is deceptively simple. Nestled somewhere underneath the jokes about tour guides, night pavers, Vermont hugs and kisses and Norman Rockwell paintings is an ongoing love story. This is really a book about Rick and Addie. It’s a work that’s underpinned by a depth and decency you don’t see very often in this world, let alone in a book that will make you laugh out loud. 

-Daniel McGinn, Author “1000 Black Umbrellas”, Write Bloody Publishing

Rick Lupert has been involved with Los Angeles. poetry since 1990. He is the recipient of the 2014 Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Distinguished Service Award and was a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets for 2 years. He created the Poetry Super Highway and hosted the weekly Cobalt Cafe reading for almost 21 years. His first spoken word album 'Rick Lupert Live and Dead' featuring 25 studio and live tracks was released in March, 2016. He’s authored 20 collections of poetry, including “Donut Famine', 'Romancing the Blarney Stone', “Making Love to the 50 Foot Woman” (Rothco Press, May 2015), “The Gettysburg Undress” and “Nothing in New England is New” (Ain’t Got No Press), and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah” and the noir anthology “The Night Goes on All Night. He also writes and draws (with Brendan Constantine) the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” and writes the Jewish Poetry column “From the Lupertverse” for The Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He has read his poetry all over the world.