Available works - JAY SIZEMORE

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I have nineteen poetry books available now on Amazon, one short story collection, and one collection of essays. Produced by my own startup press, Crow Hollow Books, they range in price from $6 to $34.

This is what people have been saying about Father Figures:

“Buy this book unless you want to lose out on one of the most promising poets today. No, he’s not Billy Collins. Sizemore won’t make you grin, nor will he offer brilliant metaphors. Instead, he spills raw emotion onto a page like Pollock splattered canvases. I had a difficult time reading through this book in one sitting, because the stories Sizemore tells can tear a heart apart. Either you will relate, or you will feel lucky you avoided his life.” — Linda Goin

“Jay Sizemore’s collection, “Father Figures” will punch you in the gut with a harsh dose of reality and starkness. The struggle and search for serenity and safety in the home is ongoing. These poems will make you grateful if anyone tucked you into bed at night at all throughout childhood. Mr. Sizemore’s heart is on the page. Somehow he survived being bounced around amongst unstable care givers, or adults too consumed with their own hurt and circumstances to have anything left over for anyone else..To his credit, he puts his sweat,tears, and memories on the page. As readers, we evolve, having read these pieces, and they are a reminder to just keep putting one foot in front of the other — keep going, get out. Survive. You can flourish too.” — Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

“There’s a vulnerability rippling through this work that I really admire. It’s blood and dirt and guilt and regret and all the raw things of humanity that are worth writing about. Consider picking up a copy.” — Matthew Burnside

“I expected a random selection of poems and instead I was taken on a disturbing journey that I wasn’t prepared for. At times the writing is so personal that you have to put the book down and take a break. I don’t think that I have ever read a poetry collection quite like this. I highly recommend this book.” — Nick Ramsey

Here are some thoughts on Confessions of a Porn Addict:

In Confessions of a Porn Addict, Jay Sizemore bravely dives into the pool of desire, compulsion, and dealing with the consequences. In the opening poem, Sizemore writes, “I hate lying, but I lie to myself.” This character can’t help himself, though it doesn’t mean he’s happy: “These walls are painted with regret, / and broken promises / linger like ghosts in the halls.” Even if these poems are relayed through an unreliable narrator, there’s an honesty lurking that is rarely found in poetry. In “It’s selfish to demand honesty,” Sizemore declares, “the butterflies will never love you,” and it’s the kind of truth that a person who admits to objectifying his love interests can deliver. The subject may feel raw at times, but Confessions of a Porn Addict delivers beauty in its honest appraisal of desire and wanting to be desired. ~ Robert Lee Brewer, author of Solving the World’s Problems.

Jay Sizemore writes in the tradition of books like Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Confessions of a Hope Fiend, and Life Studies. These are poems that Thomas da Quincey might have written had he heard The Beatles, poems that Timothy Leary might have written if he were a poet with Tourette’s, poems that Robert Lowell might have written if he’d had access to the Internet. These are poems to read when you can’t sleep, poems to deeply inhale and hold in your lungs, poems that will make you want to double-click and double-click until satisfied. ~ Tom Hunley, author of PLUNK, and The Poetry Gymnasium.

On SCOWL:

Most powerful piece of writing I’ve read in a long time. – Mather Schneider

The brilliance of Sizemore‘s SCOWL is the reaction proved the poem’s thesis about the Internet’s call out culture. – Jeremy O’Kelley

Mein Drumpf: poems to make America great is a chapbook of poems about how the current political climate of the United States is one of Orwellian dystopic nightmares. These poems are written in response to the joke America has allowed to take center stage and the danger of playing with fire when it comes to who leads the country. Almost titled Megalomania Poems, here you get a poetic journey envisioning the world under a Donald Trump regime.

White Guilt is a series of poems responding to race relations in America and the ongoing epidemic of police brutality leading to senseless deaths of young black men and women, like Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and more.

It’s Not All Bad is my collection of short fiction, ranging from horror to transgressive to sci-fi to literature. Not for the faint of heart. Not for the easily offended. This collection of short stories has something to keep everyone awake at night, and then something to make them feel better in the daylight. Proceed with caution, but remember…It’s Not All Bad. Here you will find stories of desolate futures. Stories where people kill and worse, battling demons inside and out. You’ll find men willing to do anything to get back that which they lost. And men giving hope to the hopeless in the strangest of ways. There’s another reason to not eat fast food. And another reason to distrust old houses. Things are not always as they seem, but in this collection, you are bound to keep turning the pages to see what’s next.