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Retrievals

By Garrett Caples
Publication Date: September 9, 2014

ISBN# 9781933517988 (6.5x9 304pp, paperback)
ISBN# 9781933517995 (6.5x9 304pp, limited edition hardcover)

Description
Reviews
Bio

Retrievals is a collection of criticism about underrecognized poets, unfairly discredited critics, artists obscured by more famous relations—basically, writers and artists that have fallen off the cultural map or never quite made it there in the first place. These essays, collected for the first time, span 10 years of Garrett Caples’ writing as an arts journalist and editor at City Lights. His encyclopedic knowledge of surrealism, art history, and Bay Area artists together with candid and tender anecdotes give his writing a humble charm not often found in works of criticism.

Read an excerpt from Retrievals at the Poetry Foundation!
With this collection [Caples has] certainly achieved his goal of being “an activist critic”—one who seeks out lesser-known artists and writers, rehabilitates reputations, and brings new works to light.
Publishers Weekly

The book maneuvers through modernism by taking close looks at some of its artists, theorists, and critics, spanning such topics as the invention of art history and personally collaborating with Humpty Hump. Written in Caples' signature blend of erudition and elan, the essays also include photos of some of the art in question.
Evan Karp, SF Weekly

Retrievals constructs an alternate (and wonderfully scenic) route through the 20th century that would likely lead us to Caples’s shelves. In this way, it’s a thoroughly personal document patched from public dispatches.
Michael Andor Brodeur, The Boston Globe
Garrett Caples is the author of Power Ballads (Wave Books, 2016), Retrievals (2014), The Garrett Caples Reader (1999), Complications (2007), and Quintessence of the Minor (2010). He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (2013). He is the poetry editor at City Lights Books and curates the Spotlight Poetry Series there. He is also a contributing writer to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He has written articles and blogged for the Poetry Foundation and occasionally blogs for blogcitylights.com. He has a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco.