Each word in John Crouse’s Headlines is capitalized so that they are sensual, alone, blowholes—one word many things—or as he says “Comprehensive Azures Contiguous Stacks Floating.” It’s as if one’s reading it is an alphabet that changes experiencing: “I Saw Me Backward Yesterday. Have It Float.”
John Crouse
Praise for Headlines
“An Experience & Engine Of Spicerian Dictation Disbursed Until It Hurts,” John Crouse’s Headlines Invites A Reader To Step Outside & “Make A World Taste Good.” Complex As Hell (“Not Knowing What Direction The Airs In”) & Conjugating Humanity Above & Beneath The Soil The Ghost Of These Headlines Ushers In A Convolute United States “Snuggled At Doubled Loop Ripe Breasts” On All Fours. Pull The Floor Out. Cagney & Flann O’Brien Meet Clark Coolidge & Sam Fuller On Whitman’s Rails. “Does It Mix?” Post-Trend (NOT Marsalis Neo-Bop) Ears Work At The Dissonant Notes, Dirt Roughened Edges & What’s “Wrong” Standing Against “The Poetry Of The Complacent.” How To Spock? Perfect Melting Delicious Moments Breathe. “A Hick Appeared In A Montgomery Clift.” The Writing Of Headlines Becomes A Complete Wonder.
— Andrew Levy
In Headlines, John Crouse’s chancy motion measure allows all sorts of rolling specifics to place and pace themselves. The “plot” builds and recedes in layers, like bricks, or sand, townhouses, or dictionary entries. Often, miss dear grit! He’s on to something, tremendous, jarringly appealing.
— Elizabeth Treadwell
In his Headlines John Crouse pains takes the pretenses of our collectively mediated consciousnesses. “Really Going To Saw On Something Tangible.” Read all about it!
— Rod Smith
Crouse is no tentative theorist, and he uses his basic mode all capped words, minimal punctuation, disregard for normal sentence structure to take his readers on thrash-speed thrill-sport travels of microtonal verbal experience, masking behind information overload and synapse-swarming syntax.
— Publishers Weekly