Disappearing, Inc.

by Brandon Amico

The poems in Disappearing, Inc. interrogate our fragmented and relentless moment in American history, one that constantly breaks down the self in order to analyze and assign value to our constituent parts. Tackling everything from dying bees and a crumbling climate to technology, self-worth, and self-preservation, Disappearing, Inc. marks the arrival of an energetic, urgent voice in American poetry.

"Brandon Amico's use of language is ecstatic. His lines rattle with wit, uncanny phrasing, up-to-the-minute diction, and a mischievous voice that both astonishes and consoles. The linguisitc exuberance in Disappearing, Inc. echoes our relentless times."
—Eduardo C. Corral

"Brandon Amico's debut collection orbits a dark star that burns with questions of money, value, worth. The gravity of consequence is fierce in these urgent poems; their concurrent menace and vulnerability is uniquely unsettling"
—Karen Solie

"Disappearing, Inc. is an important book, a collection of poetry that so fully immerses itself in our particularly insidious, yet seductive, capitalist moment that it writes both of and from it. Commerce, branding, and the endless supply of information and misinformation have become relentless, and Amico skillfully mirrors that overwhelm with his deft use of rhythm and line."
—Lynn Melnick

"If Karl Marx had worked the Catskills, he might have sounded like this. How might we live differently? these poems wonder, with ache and tender imagining, offering us the reminder that punchlines punch, and we are left breathless."
—Michael Bazzett

"Readers of Brandon Amico’s debut book can’t help but buy into his wit, his keen eye for the insidious in the everyday, his understanding of loneliness in a throng, his attention to language. Both timely and tomorrow, a critique of what American society is selling and our complicity in the sale."
—Karen Skolfield

Genres: Poetry

66 pages, Paperback

Published March 12, 2019

About the author

Brandon Amico is a writer whose debut collection of poems, DISAPPEARING, INC., was published in March 2019 from Gold Wake Press.

He is a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow as well as the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Regional Artist Grant and the Hoepfner Literary Award for poetry, awarded by Southern Humanities Review. His poetry can be found now or soon in journals including The Awl, The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Booth, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, Diode, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hunger Mountain, Kenyon Review, New Ohio Review, Sixth Finch, Slice, Waxwing, and Verse Daily, and his reviews have been featured by 32 Poems, AGNI Online, The Los Angeles Review, Mid-American Review, The Rumpus, and Southern Humanities Review.

Reviews

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so taken, here, with the declarative sentences, and the relentlessness that mirrors our American life.

Some of my favorite moments:

For every new marriage, there is an equal and opposite divorce.

I am not alone in the brotherhood
of failing to be better.

Let us dress for ceremony and its scaffolding

A new poll suggest 100% of time
is wasted.

I am dressed as an ineffectual god.

[Kasandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Carlos Williams would not have said "It is difficult/to get the news from poems" if he'd been able to read this: these are poems that address our current political, economic, personal, and national challenges in ways surprising, inventive, poignant, and electric. Full of fantastic poems, I dog-eared too many to list here. But if you pick this up, and you SHOULD pick it up, even if you think you "don't like poetry", even if you think contemporary poetry doesn't speak to you, and at least read "A New Gun Folds up to Look Just Like a Smartphone", "Life Hacks for Being a Person", "Observation Effect", "E Pluribus Unum", and "Housing Complex", to name a few. As a poet who's also a CPA, I often find attempts to write effectively about capitalism and the economy variously whiny, pedantic, or dry as dust, but Amico has such a wry sense of humor and a keen eye for our culture that these are a joy. Not only a keeper, this is a historical document of our time, important but not pretentious, vital but at the same time entirely relatable. It's not obscure, it's not playing games with you, it wants to grab you by the collar and say Wake Up. Very highly recommended. Buy this book.

[Jennifer Pullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clever, incisive and honest. A fantastic collection!

[Ellie White · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is haunting. The poems are well-crafted with a distinctive voice that seems both manic and deeply cynical. Amico does an excellent job of capturing the present moment in all its sensationalized, introverted, anxious glory.

[Alyse Bensel · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are both hilarious and dark, featuring speakers who deftly craft riddles that no one really wants to know the answer to: guns are ubiquitous, social media runs the show, and capitalism has the last laugh. But Amico's debut collection is more than its wit. The poems pull back the curtain behind American culture's obsession with carefully crafted persona and horrific tragedy by acknowledging the need to endure by, at the very least, attempting to heal the world.

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is magic! Amico delves into the caverns of the mind, excavating the roots of our ever evolving dystopian society. Riddled with luminescent language and a fervent passion for the human spirit, Disappearing Inc. will expand your psyche into the beyond.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of poems that focus on the current status of our world - student debt, the struggle to make it each day, the death of the planet, the drudge of paying rent each month.

from The Fear: "I am not alone in the brotherhood / of failing to be better; of owning / good intentions and being buried under / the interest they accrue."

from Self-Portrait With Oncoming Storm: "and this // is why I don't live father north, the roads thinner, colder the capillaries quicker to collapse in my fingertips, // toes blue as a storm-shook sky, one jackknifed / tractor trailer on the highway's a clot and the tissue downvein // dies."

Overall an interesting collection but not one that pulled me in emotionally.

[Josh Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amico’s poetry is crafty, poignant, and snarky as one is taken down a strip mall of modern life, commodifying physically wealth and feelings along the way. Speculative and critical of society at times, yet fully grounded in a world that mimics ours so much. A must-read book of the ‘20s.

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent, funny & moving poetry collection that offers a nice sucker punch to capitalism. If Radiohead were a funny & moving poetry collection, this would be it.