Chaucer’s Books will host poet and local author David Starkey for an in-store book talk and signing of his novel “Poor Ghost” (Keylight Books/Turner Publishing), 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 26 at 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.
Starkey served as Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, 2009-11.
In his new book, on a September afternoon in Santa Barbara, a private jet carrying the members of Poor Ghost, one of America’s most storied rock bands, plunges into the backyard of Caleb Crane, a retired insurance salesman.
Still mourning his wife’s death from Covid, Caleb finds himself navigating trauma, grief and loss, all while his quiet neighborhood is invaded by pushy reporters and rabid Poor Ghost fans.
For fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & the Six” and its fictional documentary structure, “Poor Ghost” moves back and forth between the impact of the plane crash on Caleb’s life and an oral history of Poor Ghost. from its beginnings as a working-class punk band to rock icons.
Starkey is founding director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, co-editor of the California Review of Books, and the publisher/co-editor of Gunpowder Press.
Over the past 35 years, he has published 11 full-length collections of poetry with small presses, and more than 500 poems in literary journals such as American Scholar, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Review.
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