The Lost Novel

Marked by nonchalant humor and surreal imagery, James Shea's refreshing collection The Lost Novel taps into the unspoken desires and angst of the modern man. Intellectual and provocative, Shea's writing teases the imagination and exposes the instability of meanings, encouraging the reader to discover the hidden poetry between the lines.

In "Thinking of Work," the everyday mundane is compared to house renovation work, and the poet confesses how he can see through life to "its innards, /all the hollow places." Then, to the reader's surprise, the poem ends with the unexpected twists and turns in life that can happen any moment, and which more than compensates for the day-to-day uneventfulness: