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With its tongue-in-cheek slogan, “Poetry you can actually read”, Zeitgeist Press has been independently publishing some of the most radically visceral and primordial renegade poetry since 1986, releasing collections by notorious poets David Lerner, Julia Vinograd, Jack Micheline and Bruce Isaacson.

The renegades of Zeitgeist Press pride themselves in their no holds barred and wildly expressive Beat-influenced poetry. Taking the reigns where the Beats left off, Zeitgeist Press has established itself as a powerhouse of the postmodern counterculture with collections titled, A Boy’s Guide to Arson and I Want to Kill Everything.

As one of Zeitgeist’s founders, Bruce Isaacson has maintained his reputation as a crafted poet and shrewdly astute social critic for the past two decades. His poetry has garnered the attention of the prolific heavyweights of modern poetry, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Hirschman. Isaacson’s most recent publication under Zeitgeist Press is the 2010 collection of poems, What You Remember of Life.

With What You Remember of Life, Isaacson creates a relatable landscape for the tragic absurdities inherent to the human condition. He examines exactly what it is that we remember of our lives, and most of the time, for most of us, that isn’t anything good.

His first poem, To The Bone presents the most obvious existential absurdity, death. Isaacson’s thematic elements are reminiscent of the Confessionalist poets as he intimately relates to death and isolation.

With Arse Poetica, Isaacson examines the mundane everyday, vapid banalities, which we are all subjected to with every unfortunate awakening into consciousness. Isaacson argues that by the age of thirteen, the illusion of utopia is shattered and we are left alone amongst the painful shards of an absurd existence. With a lugubrious howl of recognition, Isaacson offers that there is no remedy for the human condition.

Among his other poems, Isaacson questions metaphysics and the afterlife, presents the bleakness of suburban life and offers to readers that which he remembers of life.

The poetry creates an intimate atmosphere for readers in which they are prompted to reflect upon their own lives and what they remember of them.