Quick Millions

Author: Paul Maziar

Publisher: Cuneiform Press (2023)

“I hear an unerring genius for phrasing in this voice, a poet brimming with charm and ‘self-selecting’ vividness. I am reminded of the work of Eileen Myles, Pierre Reverdy, and John Wieners. The voice is being reshuffled to the point of constant motion, like when a notebook poem just fits together endlessly, and the poet can even speak through someone else’s text with an alarming clarity. Paul Maziar introduces a new way of making poems through addition, subtraction, and through the beheading of storytelling. He is a true hero locked in his quest. Quick Millions is dripping with magic—get a handle on it as quickly as you can.”

—Cedar Sigo

“Paul Maziar’s poems communicate fluently across bursts of interruption, code-switches, and second thoughts. What gets communicated is an aesthetic of exuberant nonchalance, a devil-may-care attitude that is as attractive as it is elusive. Inner and outer realms converge to paint a cubist picture of experience, alternately dreamlike and awake to possibility, both current and buried deep in the past. ‘I wake up / a funny form / on a flat speck / of red silt / a million or more years on . . .’ Maziar’s sensibility, refined through his work as an art critic, is relaxed and alert. It’s a breath of fresh air.”

—Kit Robinson