A Bit Left of Straight Ahead is an exploration-a journey within journey-born from Kim Peter Kovac's eclectic knowledge and his free-form imagination. The poems are inhabited by poets, painters, musicians, action figures, fairy tale characters, myths, historical persons, who venture across time and geography to places such as Andalusia, Romania, Robben Island, Sarajevo, Wadi Rum, Okinawa, and Saturn.
Kovac has created a tapestry of magical realism, time-shifts, stylistic variety, and non-linearity that is woven with interludes of humor, philosophy, whimsy, and music. His poems explore reconciliation through communion with the past; critique notions of mental health, war, and "othering" people; and cast a quirky yet truthful eye on the zeitgeist.
Early Praise:
"A Bit Left of Straight Ahead is an act of neural cartography; a vibrant creative force...a delightful, sprawling collection that rewards being read many times over."
-Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode
"Masterful for its panoramic humanity and theatrically charged verbal wit, A Bit Left of Straight Ahead is a glorious collection of lyrical verse...mind-bogglingly imaginative..."
-Regie Cabico, Nuyoircan Poets Cafe Grand Slam Champion, author of A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex
"...takes the reader on magical musings...to experience percussive, lyrical worlds."
-Hélène Cardona, award-winning author of Life in Suspension and Dreaming My Animal Selves
"A Bit Left of Straight Ahead provides new angles on that which I thought I'd seen, including even my own memories."
-Idris Goodwin, Breakbeat poet & playwright
"[P]lease steep yourself in these poems and the liminal, limitless spaces they offer."
-Maria Nazos, author of PULSE, translator of The Slow Horizon that Breathes
"Kovac is a master of finding where the mundane and the magical converge."
-Karen Zacarias, playwright, author of Native Gardens and Destiny of Desire
