Thirst for Beginners: Poems, Prose, and Quizzes by Thomas Lucky Richards

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Thirst for Beginners: Poems, Prose, and Quizzes
by Thomas Lucky Richards
Official Publication Date: August 4, 2020
Trade Paper;108 pages; 5-1/4" x 8"
ISBN 978-1-938753-35-0
POEMS | PROSE | QUIZZES

Thirst for Beginners: Poems, Prose, and Quizzes is written somewhere near the states of melancholy, loneliness, introspection, acceptance, and laughter. Thomas Lucky Richards wrote these poems hoping to find real avenues for living without destroying the trails of his quixotic quests. His stories and prose wander about the landscape of Italo Calvino, and his quizzes twist the dial filling the room with nitrous oxide causing us to laugh at the state we’ve now found ourselves in.

“The poems, prose, quizzes, and instructions in Thirst are full of wit, sharp social commentary, wisdom, laugh out loud humor, and, of course, heartbreak. Richards’ work is exuberant and present. This book makes me want to eat ‘cherries,’ love again and again, ‘sparkle’ a little, make a few more mistakes, and drink some whiskey, even though I don’t like whiskey. There is a poem that tells me to have fun, and after reading it, I really want to. Thirst searches and tries to make sense of this mess called life. On Richards’ quest, he reminds me what it is to be human; he reminds me I am Tom; he reminds me I am not alone.” —Chrys Tobey, author of a woman is a woman is a woman is a woman (Steel Toe Books, 2017).

“In Thirst for Beginners, Richards unleashes a crackling collection of poems, prose, and quizzes that knocked me out from the first page with their particular voice and style. Richards upsets notions of genre, form, and all things typical in this entertaining and stirring book.”  —A.M. O’Malley, author of Expecting Something Else (University of Hell Press, 2016).

“I feel like the world is crazy and doesn’t make sense almost all the time. And that’s why I turn to books like Thirst for Beginners—because this insane life needs equally wild poetry to answer it, to help us make sense of the world and of us. We are all beginners and we should all be thirsty.” —Matthew Dickman, author of Wonderland (W.W. Norton, 2018) and frequent contributor to The New Yorker.