PAIN: The Board Game

Galleys: Galleys will be available on request and sent to reviewers prior to release including Rolling Stone, New York Times, New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Rumpus, Bomb, and more. Media: A download page featuring audio recording of his poems will be available. A professionally produced book trailer plus video for a select poem will be available. Touring: Starkweather reads regularly and plans to tour in Summer of 2015. We will be trying to include Starkweather on festival dates with JAck White where possible. For example, Starkweather read at the Newport Folk Festival when Jack played in 2014. Social Media: *TMB and TMR use all social media platforms regularly to post reviews, excerpts and profiles related to TMB authors. For instance, we posted a poem a day from Language Lessons for the month prior and after the release. We also have sent exclusive audio downloads of select authors to our Vault subscription service. This download is always accompanied by blurbs, photos, links to relevant sites, and author bio. *Third Man Books Twitter 1,358 Followers *Third Man Records Twitter 118k Followers *Third Man Records FB 135,830 Likes *Third Man Records.com receives an average 3500 visits per day *Third Man Records Instagram has 64k Followers *Third Man Books.com is housed within ThirdManRecords.com

Schopenhauer said life is pain. Starkweather says Pain: The Board Game."[A] provocative reinterpretation of poetry's function...Here is devastating meta-poetry for the board game--playing, smartphone-scrolling masses, both accessible and enlightened."--Publisher's Weekly I am of my times and you screengrab out of ancient nowhere, the title of one of the poems in Starkweather's second collection, PAIN: The Board Game, perfectly captures both his utter contemporariness and his empathetic treatment of our most primal conditions: "dis- / appointment / & misery / & helplessness / & suffering / & pain / & fear." As he deploys the #trending and vintage lexicons of technology and pop culture with the depth and ease of a true lyricist, Starkweather pushes his poems into the territory of universal affect and risky humanity, to the root of our desire to connect. This is the contemporary poem that, just after it has "Shazamed / your orgasm" resurrects "the rough magic / of bodies / illuminating / the lack / of any / limitation / when one." Starkweather's unyielding, funny, luminous poetry is a brand new classic. Also includes 15 color illustrations by artist Jon-Michael Frank. 3 shots to the chest at the arcade Sadness is my favorite video game I am its hero the little man with facial hair scampering through pixilated cities looking for clues and accumulating shit without knowing why trying not to be crushed or free fall into the not-world's dark as 8-bit clouds scroll across the pre- programmed sky it's exhausting but I take it next level I am happy here it feels real and I can always die