The Emperor's Sofa is a sprawling gift of outrageous artifice, a world of Mad Magazine intensity enriched by Ashberyian ironies and McGimpseyian pleasures. Santos imagines a poetic land of deranged heroes and unmasked anti-heroic marvels - funny, poignant, and profound. Behind the façade of the Emperor's restless opulence stands this collection's insight; a new poetics has landed, after the wars - a copious Montreal Style of styles, where, from its royal mount, "the view is indeed magnificent." This marks the spot where a brilliant poet debuts - fully cognizant of the clash between the trashy new and the zany old, and of all the useless beauty in between.

Greg Santos was born and raised in Montreal. He has studied at Mount Allison (Sackville, NB), Concordia (Montreal, QC), Columbia (New York, NY) universities, and received an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School (New York, NY). His writing has appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, includings McSweeney's, Nthposition, The Best American Poetry, The Feathertale Review, Matrix, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Rogue Stimulus (Mansfield Press, 2010), The Future Hygienic (PistolPress, 2009), Dingers: Contemporary Baseball Writing (DC Books, 2007), and as a featured 'Parliamentary Poem of the Week' selection. He is also the author of the e-book Thinking Things Through (Pangur Ban Party, 2009) and the chapbook Oblivion Avenue (Trainwreck Press, 2008). He currently works as a writing instructor and is the poetry editor of pax americana.

Greg Santos' profile page

I read and loved The Emperor's Sofa. Then I went back and read all the 'Emperor' poems again. Greg Santos hit this really wonderful tone in those poems vulnerable but strong, beautiful but heartbreaking, lonely but full of love.' -- Michael Kimball, author of Us and Dear Everybody