Phlogiston

Dennis Caswell lives outside Woodinville, Washington and works as a software engineer in the aviation industry. Before that, he designed and programmed computer games and educational software. His work has appeared in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, Burnside Review, Monkey Puzzle, Vain, and assorted other journals and anthologies. Phlogiston is the title poem from his first full-length collection.

“The poems of Phlogiston are brimful with humor, intelligence, love of language, pop culture references, science factoids, and sexiness. I admire the deft blending of such cosmological, political, and religious oddities as “we pull back the future’s endless undies.” And this joyful hilarity is balanced by a deeply personal and thoughtful poignancy in poems to a distant father, an aunt, Emily Dickinson (in anagrams), his mother. “ . . . if our deaths are like stars that blew up ages ago, and we’re just waiting until the light gets here . . .” these poems are gleefully lighting the way.”

—Peter Pereira, author of Saying the World and What's Written on the Body

“Three titles from this book: ‘Jesus Slaves,’ ‘Fan Mail from Some Flounder,’ and ‘Richard Nixon’s Love Letters.’ Three lines: ‘And when the aliens come, / I want to be the one they pick / to explain model railroads and curling.’ Now moving, now funny, now both; but always quirky, Dennis Caswell reminds us that poetry thrives on surprise.–Jack McCarthy