Burn On

by Andrew K. Peterson and Joseph Cooper

About this chapbook

In the late-oughts/early-tens, I used to hop in my Nissan Sentra with the broken power windows and the sometimes no heat, and head west to visit Joe Cooper in Buffalo for a good goon weekend of writin’ and poet hangin’ time. We’d been friends for about a decade, since meeting at Naropa’s Kerouac School in 2004.

On one such trip – I remember it as winter cos it’s Buffalo, where it’s always winter - as per usual I brought a bunch of poetry books I was reading to add to Joe’s recent reads that he kept stacked on his dining room table (much to his roommate brother’s bemusement/chagrin, I think).

From that visit we concocted Burn On, a collaborative rustbelt gothic poem. Besides those piles of books, a few other touchpoints of inspiration I vaguely remember: T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets, Helen Adam’s poetry and collage, and Andrew Bird’s instrumental album Useless Creatures.

I’m sure we laughed a lot dictating half-read/half-imagined conjuring before we walked through the snow to Joe’s neighborhood dive for wings and stiff pours from Joe’s childhood friend Chris who tended bar. We’re thrilled to exhume this haunted fun from our friendship past of yore.

– AKP

About the authors

Andrew K. Peterson is the author of six poetry books, most recently the tete-beche double book Scorpio Journal/Secret Equinox (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023). He lives in Boston.

Joseph Cooper is the author of six books, most recently Splash Fields (VA Press, 2024). He lives in Lewisburg, West Virginia.

Published April 15, 2024.