Publisher's Synopsis
As you read the poetry of Xuleca Lounge, you step into the heart of a world like being inside a diamond with its many different facets of light. Xuleca Lounge invites you to travel like Alice into Xuleca's special wonderland through a portal which can take you on a journey into the realm of the creative process. A place to go when one needs to rest, grieve or regain a sense of wonder in the face the world. Xuleca Lounge reveals itself in the psychological world of mythology as well as within the experience of dreams and the unconscious. It can be found in nature, a cabaret show, a museum, a garden, in love or, in grief. In short, Xuleca Lounge becomes the portal space within our experience of life and loss where we can all gaze through this creative looking glass that we possess. Suffused with dramatic imagism and lyricism, Burke incorporates the magical realism of García Márquez with the rhythms and spirituality of Blake and Lorca, the terse intensity of Plath and the epiphanies of Joyce.
My first book, Angry June Moon Says Hello (2010) explored coming out as a gay man and how my identity evolved and exploded from isolated repression and loneliness to a wonderful life with my husband of 37 years, Miguel. Xuleca Lounge became more about what happens after coming out and the celebration is over. It examines the complexity of experience from great beauty to traumatic loss and grief that often seek to define and strangely help resurrect our lives. Xuleca Lounge is about the meaning of love, self-actualization and spirituality and how myth impacts our lives through the great psychological meaning they impart to our landscapes. These were utilized in my narrative to take you on a journey with a kaleidoscopic lens of wonder. I believe Xuleca Lounge is a world that will resonate with and astound the reader as it has done for me. Come to Xuleca Lounge and experience the intense wonder of the self's journey, a journey that we all share, in different ways, like the different facets of light in a diamond!
"Xuleca Lounge is an engaging, intimate account of the poet's courageous search for authenticity, it is a dream image that serves as an eternal and elusive nirvana calling to the poet as he struggles with transcendent personal and religious issues in his search for a meaningful identity which is able to encompass all that he is. Howard J Kogan, author of Indian Summer and A Chill in the Air."
"Cascading metaphors, classical allusions and dreamlike sequences combine to unleash a stunning sequence of bold revelations and personal truths. Xuleca Lounge generously rewards the attentive and patient reader with an intimate and elegantly expressed poetic-portrait of one man's struggle for honesty and self-fulfillment." Martin Keefe, author of Taking the Measure and Tales from a Cardboard Box
