[05/01/26] Ebenkamp, Paul: Sunworshippers

Ugly Duckling Presse, paperback

Publication Date: May 1, 2026

Publisher Marketing: The outcome of a series of extended techniques developed over a decade of psychic repair, Sunworshippers is a work of mid-life summation done by someone who knows darn well they were just born. In a constant circadian volte-face between self and soul, reticence and openness, mortal limit and cosmic intermittence, these imaginal forms welcome all trouble and all desire. Bewildered laughter is involved; awe is actively courted; exuberantly bleak zones are approached and embodied with incandescent tenderness; harmony and joy are well-documented. Our era may be one of hyper-executive, ultra-processed self-possessiveness, but truth makes the new music, here in the ancient present: "new vistas of nowhere else."

“Sunworshippers' vital center is the expansive undulating energy of the spell. Psychic calibrations are flipped and torqued to wondrous new reaches in a dazzling array of language. Prepare for frequency changes affecting body, mind and speech within the burgeoning forcefield of these poems. Herein lies the transformational power of a sun-induced insurgency and we, the reader, are in its throes. Paul Ebenkamp has envisioned a book of sonic-solar radiance and meditative power.” —Brenda Ijima

“'(You don’t have / to finish this)' writes Paul Ebenkamp early on in 'Follower,' but I can’t quit this tractor beam of a book—it’s got my number and my order ready and is everything I want from poetry. There’s so much strange, strong motion here—not to mention all the spooky static cling and action—and when Sunworshippers speeds to a halt, you’ll want to read it all over again, this time with even more feeling, more attention, more patience, more smarts, which is to say more of what it gave to you the first time around. Pack a lunch and put some napkins in the bag—you’re gonna be here a while." —Graham Foust

"Paul Ebenkamp’s books so far have placed him among the great company of weirdos and cranks and seers whose poetry comes from the other side of the real. Sunworshippers’ wry, almost aphoristic architecture, combined with an unsentimental, meditative faith in the words as they come, gives these new poems an even sharper wildness than before. Unease and mistrust suffuse this book—there is pain and resignation here—but it is also very charming. It must be the woozy, subversive elegance of his ear—Paul's lines cut somewhere between a wisecrack and a cracked code: 'Halfway endless / with the breathwork'. These poems are endlessly quotable, mellow, pissed-off and mournful, a little paranoid but that’s just realism, 'just / gore and its soulwork / here, looking pretty / much nothing like / his picture': Sunworshippers is Paul’s best batch yet." —Jared Stanley

"Paul Ebenkamp’s poems are music from a dream we had in another life. The dark truth of them is the joke of a Zen master, clobbering me over the head. I awake on the floor shuddering, puzzled and thrilled." —Ivy Johnson