A Car Stops And A Door Opens

A Car Stops And A Door Opens takes us into the world of street corner and jail, nursing home and classroom, handcuffs and train set, ghosts and grandchildren, imaginary friends, and very real longings. It begins with the expulsion from Paradise and ends in a letter to a great- great grandson, and in between the mind claims its right to play – and even to laugh – in the midst of terror and desire, grief and guilt.

Christopher Bursk is the author of thirteen books including Unthrifty Loveliness, Selected Poems, The Improbable Swervings of Atoms (winner of the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry from AWP and the Milton Kessler Prize), Ovid at Fifteen (winner of the Green Rose Prize), and The First Inhabitants of Arcadia (winner of the Patterson Prize). Most importantly Bursk is the grandfather of six.

I’ve been publishing Chris Bursk’s disarmingly intimate and unflinchingly honest poetry for nearly forty years, and I continue to be awed by his vulnerability and courage. Also the man can write: his love of language is palpable. You can tell he chooses each word carefully, yet the overall effect is of a flowing conversation. It’s a conversation that’s sometimes uncomfortably direct – say when he explores the darker sides of sexual desire – but his humility and generosity of spirit make him an always-trustworthy guide.
– Sy Safransky, Editor, The Sun

Christopher Bursk confesses that until he was seventeen, he solaced himself by inventing an imaginary companion. The quiet triumph of this book is that he enlists the reader as such a secret sharer. In A Car Stops and a Door Opens, he takes us on a “road trip” that includes his troubled upbringing. On this journey, he explores relationships with honesty and empathy, while disarming us with his rueful, quirky wit: “No one else was willing to be Judas, so I agreed…” Bursk is America’s bard of adolescence.
— Philip Fried, editor Manhattan Review

March 2017
128 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
ISBN 978-1-933880-60-0
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