A Brief History of Burning

Author: Cait O'Kane

Publisher: Belladonna* (2020)

A Brief History of Burning is a dynamic critique of the pervasive and failing systems menacing the working class. O'Kane discloses the moral crises of addiction, debt affliction, and an ascendant police state against communities of resistance in North Philadelphia and New York City.

"I go to Cait O'Kane's A Brief History of Burning for jittery scorched poet gaze, I go to Cait O'Kane for sharp angles on alt news 'lamppost surveillance.' The bloody curtains open on daily wounds and rounds, ghetto's difficult opiod dawn, where people die and 'credit is a cage.' Demons lodged in city's ragged state of mind. I go to Cait O'Kane for the wrestle in Capitalocene, no wiggle room for angels. Yet angels stand witness. I go to Cait O'Kane for her spiritual queerdom, her rhythmic uncompromising slant, and imagination. I go to Cait O'Kane for allegiance to Burroughsian word as killer virus, and Amiri Baraka's clarion for centuries' overdue justice and Sean Bonney's stride. I go to Cait O'Kane for wit, stamina and urgency, for brainy nuance inside millennial think-speak and how it transforms to resistance. I go to Cait O'Kane for how she articulates the Zeitgeist best, inner passion from the underbelly up. I go to Cait for the wild things fleeting in and out of hyper consciousness. Poetry and performance ground this public poet in quivering screed-paeans of time and space. Give it up to Cait, pure produce of American karmic curse and promise. This first book secures the promise."

–Anne Waldman