A Bibliography

A Bibliography

Poetry and fiction books by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Only the five most recently published books are still in print: Unwelcome Guests, Some Disassembly Required, The Ambassador Takes One For the Team, Entanglement, and Metastable Systems. The newest is available from me ($23 postpaid; $3 PDF) or from the publisher: https://weirdhousepress.com/products/unwelcome-guests-by-david-c-kopaska-merkel?_pos=1&_psq=kopas&_ss=e&_v=1.0 Unwelcome Guests was published in a signed and numbered edition of 100.

The other four books are available from Amazon, but if you order from me I get more of the money. Also, if you order two print books the price you pay is $3 less than the price listed. So if the two books are listed at $10 each, you pay $17. Three books are $5 off. Four or five together are $7 off. If you order a print book and an ebook, the latter is free.

My Newest Book:

Unwelcome Guests

Unwelcome Guests is the newest full-length collection of dark speculative poetry from SFPA Grand Master and Rhysling winner David C. Kopaska-Merkel

There’s relatability and strangehood in the offerings, some miniature in haiku, a beautiful symmetry and ominous obscurity in the text, dread in the unspoken.

Where some poets hero the impact of the closing line, Kopaska-Merkel’s poems strike in the power between the lines. The reader can never predict what potency the text might disgorge

Unwelcome Guests is a spectral lover’s touch—tender, yet dooming. It’s a perfect marriage of poetry and prose, warm and chilling, starkly intelligent and reachable. Ideal for anyone.

--Eugen Bacon, Aurealis

"At turns disquieting and quirky, playful and poignant, the poems in Unwelcome Guests, like their titular subjects, will stay with you long after you've put the book down and gone to bed (perhaps leaving the light on). A welcome addition to any genre poetry lover's collection!"

-- Marsheila Rockwell, Rhysling Award-winning poet and author of the Scribe Award-nominated Shard Axe series

The first half of Unwelcome Guests slithers in and out of side-alleys in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, while the second strides avenues of science fiction. Gotta love “June Lockhart’s Recurring Nightmare”. And when “Medusa Buys a Car”. There’s so many environs of speculative poetry visited here, penned with a convincing voice and deft whispers of experimentation.

— Robert Frazier, author of Phantom Navigation

David Kopaska-Merkel’s poetry is like a twisted vein of black gold, with subtle tweaks of darkling humor. He brings to the fore other images that are like watching a glistening pool of oil, beneath which something moves. Whether disturbing sites near Carcosa, the unsuspecting traps of relationships, or unusual visitations, his poetry will inspire, entertain and make you think.

--Colleen Anderson
Rhysling Award winner

MERELY THE BUCKET LIST POEM (ON PAGE 79) IS WORTH THE ACTION ON MY MIND AND MY FUNNY BONES (MORE THAN ONE)

--Edward Mycue
Author of I Am A Fact Not A Fiction

My previous book:

Some Disassembly Required, Diminuendo Press, poetry, 2022, ISBN 978-1-936021-67-3. Order from jopnquog@gmail.com via PayPal; $10 print $3 ebook (five formats: epub, mobi, pdf, lit, lrf). If you don't use Paypal, you can send a check (address below). Winner of the Elgin Award.

Praise for Some Disassembly Required:

Some Disassembly Required had me at “Bah Bah Black Goat”….Providing both tongue-in-fungoid-cheek and real scares, Kopaska-Merkel’s poetry just about covers it with his use of free verse and formalist verse (Great Old One haibun, uh-huh), funny and scary verse, Sfnal and fantastical verse.

When you read some of these poems, you’ll recognize places you’ve been...even if only in your dreams and nightmares. Kinda nice to have some validation for those night gaunt sightings, eh?

Only reality is scarier than some of these poems.

--Denise Dumars, author of Paranormal Romance: Poems Romancing the Paranormal.

1. underfoot, the runaway spoon press, poetry, 1991, ISBN 0-926935-60-7,

2. a round white hole, dbqp press, poetry, 1993
3. The Conspiracy Unmasked, Dark Regions Press, poetry, 1994
4. Magic, edited by David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Morgan L. Kopaska-Merkel, fiction, 1995
5. hunger, Preternatural press, poetry, 1996,
6. Results of a preliminary investigation of the electrochemical properties of some organic matrices, Eraserhead Press, poetry, 1999
7. Y2K survival kit, smoldering banyan press, poetry, 1999,
8. The Ruined City, gnarled totem press, poetry, 2003,
9. Shoggoths, Sam's Dot publishing, poetry, 2003
10. The Deadbolt Casebook, Sam's Dot publishing (fiction), 2004
11. the egg show, speakeasy press, poetry, 2005, ISBN 0-9762962-0-9 ($40, entirely handmade including the paper)
12. I don't know what you're having, Sam's Dot publishing, poetry, 2005
13. Separate Destinations (with Kendall Evans), D66 Press, poetry, 2005, ISBN 1-892958-02-3

14. Hasp Deadbolt, Private Eye, Sam's Dot publishing, fiction, 2007
15. Drowning Atlantis, Spec House of Poetry, flash fiction, 2007
16. the memory of persistence, Naked Snake Press, poetry, 2007

17. Nursery Rhyme Noir, Sam's Dot, 978-09821068-3-9, fiction (incorporates 10 and 14), 2008 

18. Night Ship to Never (with Kendall Evans), Diminuendo Press, poetry, 2009

19. The Simian Transcript, Banana Oil Press, flash fiction, 2010

20. Brushfires, Sam's Dot, poetry, 2010
21. The Tin Men  (with Kendall Evans), Sam's Dot, poetry, 2011
22. The Edible Zoo, Sam's Dot, poetry, 2012, Elgin Award Third Place winner in 2013 and Second Place in 2014

23. Luminous Worlds, Dark Regions Press, poetry, 2013
24. SETI Hits Paydirt, Popcorn Press, poetry, 2014, Elgin Award Second Place winner, 2015

25. Gods and Monsters, Popcorn Press, flash fiction, 2015 

26. Metastable Systems, diminuendo press, poetry, 2017, ISBN-13: 978-1-936021-57-4. STILL AVAILABLE FROM ME, $10 print. 

27. Entanglement (with Kendall Evans), diminuendo press, poetry, 2018, ISBN 13: 978-1-936021-56-7. STILL AVAILABLE FROM ME, $7 print.

28. The Ambassador Takes One For The Team, diminuendo press, 2019, 978-1-936021-63-5. STILL AVAILABLE FROM ME ($10 print; $3 PDF)

Praise for Ambassador:

The Ambassador Takes One for the Team explores, humorously and tragically, the divine and the alien—and in doing so, the muddled, mixed mess that is humanity. By turns hilarious and hideous (frequently both at once!), these narratives are presented in a deceptively colloquial matter-of-fact voice.

And if you are one of those wacky species
That believes in an afterlife
I guess you'll never know
You were wrong about that too.

The unfortunate (mostly) human (mostly) speakers often don’t do well in their interactions with gods, other lifeforms, or the unknown—and those interactions tell us about our entirely human problems. Even those entities who interact successfully (from their point of view, at least) teach us more about ourselves than the ostensible narrator. We’re all ambassadors here, wherever we go—but sometimes acting on behalf of huge mistakes.

We need something to take our minds off
What we’re doing to ourselves,
Since we evidently
Don’t intend to stop.

Coming from a solid and evident background in hard science, which he has no hesitation in distorting or subverting, David C. Kopaska-Merkel’s clever, wonderful poems will take your mind off your troubles, all right—by giving you some new and unusual ideas to think about.

—F. J. Bergmann, former editor of Star*Line and winner of SFPA’s Elgin and Rhysling Awards

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