Chaucer’s Choice: ‘Poor Ghosts’

David Starkey is one of Santa Barbara’s most entrenched writers. His varied literary career spans poetry, textbooks and fiction, and a term as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. Starkey was Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at SBCC, co-editor of the California Review of Books, and the publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over the past 35 years, he has published 11 full-length collections of poetry with small presses. Starkey’s latest novel, titled Poor Ghosts, has a local setting, and features literal worlds in collision. The fanciful tale finds a private jet carrying the members of Poor Ghost – one of America’s most storied rock bands – plunging into the backyard of Caleb Crane, a retired insurance salesman in Santa Barbara. Crane is in mourning over his wife’s death from Covid, and now has to navigate trauma, grief and loss while his quiet neighborhood is invaded by pushy reporters and rabid fans of the fictional band. Poor Ghost moves back and forth between the impact of the plane crash on Crane’s life, and an oral history of Poor Ghost that takes us from its beginnings as a working-class punk band to penultimate rock icon status. The twists and turns of the plot converge at an intersection illustrating how we view, negotiate, argue with, and aid those who are unlike us. Starkey shares stories behind the book and signs copies on March 26th at Chaucer’s Books.