Poetry and novels by Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Kurt Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs, and others shaped a sharp, steely grey mid-twentieth century America into which any artist in his or her right mind would be afraid to be born. Two generations later, Joe King, who has grown up in this world, populates its bleak, industrialized landscape with Human Ants, featuring bold, sardonic personas who tirelessly try to mean something in a world where they fear insignificance. Although often unapologetically contemporary where it comes to content, King's poems acknowledge their intellectual predecessors; many are occupied by historical and literary figures (Nostradamus, Iago, Mozart, Jean Valjean.) But the laws of the land as portrayed in this twentieth-first century dystopia King has built in Human Ants still manage to present a sense of hope with keen intelligence and satirical humor. This work reasserts the belief that all writers try to keep believing: what is written on the page can become an agent of change.
