Dan Carey

Storage Shed

Arts & Literature

“Rich Murphy’s poetry magnifies the world, with its villains and heroes, through an unflinching eye. His poems suggest a need to understand—from understanding who we are and where our purpose comes and goes, to understanding why we learn and record what we know to connect with the past and the future. He often repeats words or sounds in a way that breaks down our comprehension of those words and what they signify. He works wonders with syntax, calling for readers to actively participate to feel the impact of the poems’ associative or dissociative reverberations. Rich Murphy’s poems present our world’s modern complications as clearly and vividly as bebop jazz through a kaleidoscope, enticing me to reread and pick up sounds I didn’t catch the first time around, out of my own need to understand through his lens.”