Zach Perl's first collection of poetry in fifteen years, Ladybird Bug Boy, is a bold and cerebral montage of his past and present selves. Teen spirit rubs against 30-something banality, urban ideas intersect small town living, and personal malaise is infected by global dis-ease.
Through an assemblage of voices and tropes, Pearl crafts a deeply personal folklore that is dark and witty as it probes the increasingly performative nature of identity in our media-driven culture: Masks are essential. Icebergs are enviable. And myriad ghosts (real and imagined) invade the text and haunt the margins.