Day one.

*Viciousness in the bedroom! I am as good as my clock.

Sleep beckons: there is room here.

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News Release

From the book flap:

In his first poetry collection, Robert Eric Shoemaker delves deeply into the darkest haven, a rift filled with addictions of harmful and placid varieties many are familiar with. Over the course of a month the writer’s attempts to remain sober and clean of all contaminants demonstrate an on-going internal battle, studded with triumphs and failures, moments of insight and moments of pain. Shoemaker’s language brims with the electrical quality of one on the edge, living as best one can under societal and artistic pressures, as well as personal demons. Shoemaker’s story and poetic voice are empathetic to the plight of multitudes. Sparkling with hope dipped in chaos, “30 Days Dry” proclaims with gusto the possibility of a future free of abuse.

Day thirty.

I think I understand this time.

“You are blessed to hold in your hands Robert Eric Shoemaker’s vivid and charming first book of poems, composed as a “doctored prescription”: to refrain from boozy spirits, and to instead partake deeply of art making, the impetus for this lucky trade being a genuine display of paternal concern and love delivered in an American chain restaurant… In the realm of Shoemaker’s multi-tonal, plural “instants,” the “greens grow like spread seed,” and the poet finds the way beneath the various shades and arcs of one’s life, the buoyant rainbow in continual and generous burn and shatter to light up the city.”

—Jessica Savitz, author of Hunting is Painting 

Dropping a coin into a boiling pot of water

“As amulet against the parched interior, 30 Days Dry wards off temptation with strongly worded texts and letters to a “mirror-me” we all recognize in one another. Round and round we go, cheering for a speaker who can spell out rightful histories in a luxurious aftermath of new grass growing.”

—Catherine Theis, author of The Fraud of Good Sleep

doesn’t make an impression.

“Like any self-help book addict waiting for the guru to publish the next volume, 30 Days Dry will make you thirst for more.”

-Jeri Frederickson, Literary Manager at Irish Theatre of Chicago & Freelance Writer

Can you spell history?

“Shoemaker squeezes the juice out of his thirty days.”

-Troy Cabida, Author of Lost in London

I can.

“I’d read more self help books if they represented honest, complicated journeys like this one… Robert Eric Shoemaker might be an undercover prophet.”

-Melissa Kiefer, Writer and Educator