Just in time for the end of history, The Last Normal Year features new, selected, and previously undetected pieces by celebrated Bellingham poet Kevin Murphy. With nods to the beats, the bards, the surrealists, and the blues, Murphy's approach is exuberant, comic, and slightly mad. Chocolate, carrots, global economies, scuba divers, and the dangerous whirling stars of the desert sky appear in cameo roles. Intimations of irrational forces and traces of blue-speckled fish may be present. This book aspires to provide many of the same benefits as around-the-world travel at a fraction of the cost. With "poetry and bedazzlement for all," Kevin Murphy inspires our allegiance to "the state of trance and / wonderment, and to the myriad manifestations which it engenders." This collection is a riotous and resplendent celebration-a curious and searching exploration-a cacophony of beauty. It is a gift summoned by a poet's heart from the ether to pull us from the humdrum woes of an overburdened planet and lift us toward the magnificence of possibility innate to our human existence. The Last Normal Year will add an abnormal sparkle to your day. -Rena Priest, Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023) There's a wild and unfettered imagination at play in these rambling verses, which find their inspiration from the farthest galaxy all the way down to the poet's bare foot, from the man who falls in love with a crab apple tree to the speaker's many lives as a fly. Take a look at "The Buddha Rat Blues," take a listen to "First Guitar," check out The Last Normal Year! -Joseph Millar, author of Shine The Last Normal Year makes me wish I could do a loud, two-fingers-in-the-mouth whistle that says, "Hurry! Look at this!" With panache and wisdom informed by Lorca, J.S. Bach, Allen Ginsberg, the Buddha, Whitman, Bob Dylan, Jesus, Wikipedia, and Dr. Seuss, among others, Murphy's poems make the absurd feel holy and vice versa. Small, unremarkable objects-yam, bean, carrot, rock-are elevated to unexpected glory, while big ideas-culture, normalcy, God-are paraded in all their finery. And the lists! Murphy's menagerie includes weasel, yak, camel, dung beetle, chihuahua, cockroach, marmoset, macaw, rat, and many monkeys (some, arguably, human). Readable and energetic, with a spoken-word drive, Kevin Murphy is the poet you want as your tour guide to the land of absurdity. "God said: let there be a lack of proper seriousness / and there was a lack of proper seriousness." Yep. (Loud whistle.) -J.I. Kleinberg, author of The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press) and Sleeping Lessons (Milk & Cake Press) Kevin Murphy's poems can bring out the twinkle on a mosquito's ankles and grant a PhD to a wildebeest. What I mean is, his poems accomplish marvelous things that poems by most other poets don't. He always welcomes the natural genius of the reader, and whether the poems are heard on the stage or read on the page, they are always, in the best ways, participatory events. -James Bertolino, author of Every Wound Has a Rhythm, Pocket Animals, and Snail River Kevin Murphy has been performing his poetry of subversive whimsy for over 45 years, often accompanying himself on guitar or percussion. He is the author of A Beautiful Chaos Demands Energy (2007) and has released two CDs of poetry, Between Onions and Oxygen (2002) and The Bird of Pure Midnight (2015). He is poet-in-residence at the Chuckanut Radio Hour, and is a winner of the Bellingham Mayor Arts Award. Kevin was born in Germany, grew up in upstate New York, and moved to Western Washington in 1979. He lives in Bellingham with his wife, Jeannie Gray.