When I’d fist heard Todd Colby in 1997 when he was involved with the Poemphone group, I found his poetic voice strong and visceral, elegantly eulogizing the American decay. In Colby’s latest collection , Tremble & Shine, Colby’s energy ignites, sparking from the pages. Colby effuses lyricism, crafting a modern punk song powerful enough to engulf an America cloaked in flag-bearing patriotism as he reveals that which quivers and illumines beneath.

Todd Colby melds a fanciful wasteland with the existing realm in which his characters are inhabitants. The most masterful example lies in the poem, “A Signal:” “In certain circles there are those who maintain/ that the ocean laps at the shore/ but I know better for I have seen horrible liquids/ pouring from the people of this land.” Colby’s personas rile and seduce and disgust us in a taut dance extending from his authorial strings.

The non-sequitur field trips Colby embarks on in Tremble & Shine allow us to trod upon greasy body landscapes and to enter a stuttering world, lush with imagery of bruises, carcasses, and hairsuits. He exaggerates his bizarre juxtapositions into the semblance of a blaring reality. His statements become neo-philosophical as in “Adult Bread”: “Scrubbing Daddy with a knife will only enflame the situation.” Through a diction of fluids and effusions, Tremble and Shine laps at traditional verse and devours it shark-like.