too young to know

by Kevin Ridgeway

Kevin Ridgeway was raised in Whittier, CA. He has lived in New York City, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine. He attended Goddard College but abandoned his studies for a failed early marriage, followed by several lost years suffering from untreated bipolar disorder during which time he embarked on a drunken public library and used book store self education with silent movies playing on his t.v. set and old school rock n roll grooving from his turntable. He began contributing to the small, independent and underground presses in 2010, and has remained prolifc ever since. He is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry. A two-time Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Net nominee, he lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 2019

About the author

Kevin Ridgeway was born and raised in Southern California, where he currently resides in a shady bungalow with his girlfriend and their one-eyed cat. He has been published in a wide variety of online and print magazines internationally. "Burn through Today" is his first chapbook collection of poetry, available from Flutter Press. Another chapbook of poetry, "Contents Under Pressure" is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press.

Reviews

[NewPages]

Poet Kevin Ridgeway dishes it out in seemingly endless amounts of true grit in his poems of loss and despair in Too Young To Know. His poems are a cross between Richard Brautigan and Denis Johnson and we can read the pathos of “Kool Aid Mustache,” “The 1988 Sears Christmas Catalog,” “My Drug Dealer’s Girlfriend,” and “The Original Unsung Hometown Zero” because less is more, because we get pulled down and are entertained, because we fall in love with Ridgeway, and because we survive along with him no matter what.

Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson.

Read the full review at our blog.

[Brian Rihlmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching, funny, insightful and raw, Kevin Ridgeway’s poetry is an intimate peek inside the mind and world of a man who’s lived through the madness and kept his eyes peeled, like a news reporter from the other side...and there is truth there. Definitely one of my favorite modern poets, and I highly recommend this book.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a specific mindset that comes with growing up like Kevin Ridgeway (at least how the narrators describe it in these poems) where everything, good and bad, is suspicious, making you hold tight your hopes, but only so tight because you know it’s going away eventually. This book captures that mindset well.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best poetry books I've ever read.

[Rusty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is painful and funny, often at the same time, and is a strong medicine for our times. You may not know something's wrong with the world of these poems, but this book will show you and start you on your way to a cure.