The Mario Kart 64 Poems

60 pages, silk laminate cover

Second printing, 50 copies

$7.00 + $3.00 shipping

August Smith‘s fourth chapbook is a collection of sixteen linked prose poems, short stories, and essay fragments, each based off of a course from everyone’s favorite seminal mid-90s Nintendo 64 racing game (no, not Diddy Kong Racing). This is, without a doubt, the best book ever written about Mario Kart 64. We checked.

SOLD OUT :(

“We know these roads because we have traveled them before–eyes ahead on the changing colors, our shoulders leaning into every turn as if our bodies can make our avatars tip up on two wheels. In The Mario Kart 64 Poems, Smith serves as tour guide, kart master, all-knowing Lakitu: changing our perception of the worlds we race through—that the obstacles we have come to expect are comforting; that we should’ve been paying attention to the landscapes: the spaces beyond the course path, the loved ones sitting one couch cushion over.”

Brian Oliu, author of Leave Luck to Heaven

“From ‘the dead AA battery you let roll behind the peeling-paint cabinet,’ to an ice cave inhabited by penguins, the poems in this volume lead us across the innumerable dimensions projected on screens and reflected within ourselves. August Smith’s journey through these landscapes is an exercise in reconciling the disembodied and seemingly frivolous world of modern entertainment with the interior world of memory, nostalgia, and sincerity. As multifaceted as a video game polygon, this collection of poems is a self-contained world that breaks down the division between the real and the digital.”

Marcus Khoury, literary translator

“It’s a masterpiece. I’m not saying that lightly.”

John Carroll, @pizzaboyfriend