What People Are Saying
"These are poems of the moment: creative, smart, powerful, and above all urgent. Murphy takes turns of phrase, idiomatic expressions, old sayings, lines from films, and turns them on their head, exploding them, imbuing them with fresh meaning. Red, White, and Blues exposes the crumbling foundations and leaky roofs in the structures of our American mythology, to offer sharper lenses through which to view the world, to stir debate and foment dissent, to dazzle with language, and, most importantly, to tell truth to power."
"Sean Murphy's verse is, in the best American tradition, a jeremiad that poetically holds us to the highest of our convictions while interrogating where we've failed. In that regard, it's also a manifesto in verse, looking not just to the past, but to the possibilities of a future embodying our highest ideals."
"The poems in Red, White, and Blues are like espresso shots to the brain. Each jolts the reader into fresh considerations of the people—both real and fictional—who have shaped American culture and history. Together, they celebrate, interrogate, mourn, rage, and sing. In other words, they distill the complicated madness of being American today."
"A dope set of poems I trust will find their way into readers' hearts and minds and be useful to their transformation."
From yearnings never expressed by “strong and silent” types to competitive father/son relationships, veteran misogynists and burgeoning incels, Murphy’s new collection looks straight at the worst traits of the white American male with a view to the future where these men can do better, be better, think beyond themselves. A timely, gripping read by a courageous writer.
Twenty-first-century manhood is a minefield – a terrain riddled with hidden dangers. A wrong word, a long-held grudge, even a mistimed joke can easily end in disaster. Traversing such explosive territory requires tremendous skill, a bucketful of courage, and no small amount of humor. Sean Murphy’s This Kind of Man has all three, in spades.
With its refreshing vulnerability, frankness, and insights, This Kind of Man fills a void in our literary landscape by artfully capturing both the tender and tormented sides of masculinity. Sean Murphy’s courageous stories do what groundbreaking literature should do—simultaneously comfort and disturb its readers. This is an important, indispensable read for our times.
In This Kind of Man, Sean Murphy excavates the complicated, tender, wild truth of what it is to be a man across generations and relationships. His wistful, funny, precise honesty lights up the page and helps the reader see the complexity of the filter of maleness. An insightful and necessary book.
The stories in Sean Murphy’s extraordinary collection This Kind of Man are swift, sharp, sometimes harsh, often sad, but so absolutely, transcendentally honest that the final effect is thrilling, a form of liberation. I know of no other eulogy for the post-war American male that so deftly captures the mingled love and anger of fathers and sons.
This Kind of Man examines the moving target of modern masculinity and asks, from multiple angles, What is a man? The discourse around this question has been shockingly absent from the literary landscape, whether due to a lack of bravery or a certain paralysis that accompanies such an inquiry. Yet Murphy dives in head-first, offering stories that explore marriage, fatherhood, aggression, alcoholism, gender expectations, generational backlash, and more with nuance, humor, and an abundance of truth. His prose thrillingly invites us to think deeply. Instead of hiding from what it means to be a man today, he gives us a broad canvas from which to take in the answers, plural, to this essential question.
For those of us who powered through complicated relationships with our fathers. For those of us who still struggle with what being a man means and what it doesn't mean. Sean Murphy offers a beautiful, honest and heart-rending portrait of what it means and could mean. But, most importantly, casts the brightest light on what it means to be human.
This Kind of Man, a suite of dramatic monologues and meditations, seems to pick up where Raymond Carver left off: anatomizing all the ways that American masculinity finds itself adrift, with a special thought for the women in the same lifeboat. Murphy sees how we live so plainly and clearly that, in the best possible way, it hurts.
Late in Kinds of Blue, his third poetry book, Sean Murphy asks: What is this? How is it possible to make instruments scream in agony and shriek in joy, at the same time? Yet, these powerful poems do just that with lines crafted from the alchemical tip of his historical pen. Conjuring legendary artists such as Miles Davis and Sam Cooke, as well as lesser-known geniuses, Eric Dolphy and Linton Kwesi Johnson, this collection offers the reader necessary pages from our troubled past so [we] might bear witness to an anguished joyful noise that could save and restore. Dear Reader, this book is full of poems you will want to research and then read out loud again, while you trust that hearing is believing. As poetry continually reminds us, we need our collective notes to more fully understand ourselves, our country, our predecessors, in all the potent ways. Even still they sang—coded texts for torn out tongues, the savage air aglow with conviction. I've read these poems again and again, then pulled my old albums out; here where poetry and music become one.
"It’s not worth singing about if it doesn’t leave a scar," the speaker in Sean Murphy's Kinds of Blue says—and these poems are about song and scar, even as they sing and heal along the hurt-lines. Murphy muses about what drives us to art, what hinders art's making, what sacrifices art demands, what makes art, and the artist, endure. "It never hurts if you write an anthem," the speaker says, though the book is filled with artists who hurt, even to the point of self-harm and death. The poems here confront an "America waking up/ slowly, from the old school/ slumber of the whitest world," and comes to a reckoning: "again it was down to artists/ to guide us through." Kinds of Blue is a wise, startling, beautiful guide.
With Kinds of Blue, Sean Murphy has created a deep personal and spiritual meditation on the personalities, stories, and souls that created some of the most important music (plus comedy, film and more) of the 20th century. More than a book 'about' these other art forms, Kinds of Blue gives voice to ineffable and transcendent qualities of the art using the medium of poetry.
A transformative journey that not only unveils new dimensions to familiar tunes but beckons you to venture into uncharted musical realms.
Sean Murphy is a blues poet and jazz artist who touches our souls and enriches our lives!
— Dr Cornel West, Professor, Philosopher, Artist, Activist, cornelwest.com
These poems are Blackness, but more: everything from jazz to Malcolm X, the church to George Floyd. Gods and goddesses are here. Myths, mythmakers, and the mythological are here. These poems deal with jazz but more, they are jazz: badass, unruly, and smart. An important collection, an instant classic.
— Adrienne Christian, Author of WORN, adriennechristian.com
With plain-spoken verse that allows the subjects and their narratives to be centered, Murphy meditates on the genius, loneliness, delights, and refusals of some of the most accomplished Black jazz musicians of the 20th century. These poems dip and sway in tempo and temperature, ringing in the ear until consonant cacophonies sound like any good horn section. Here, we find metaphors through synesthesia, with sights and sounds merging into a kind of metropolitan celestial body of stars and space, as well as ripe comparisons to Biblical figures, Greek mythologies, and the larger cosmos. But the speaker always grounds us back to the body with riffs in the rhythms, disguised as asides or digressions in parentheses. We are reminded that these Black trailblazers could not afford to wait on recognition, but claimed space as great makers of art unabashedly, as Murphy writes: ‘…You can’t ask reality;/ you need to reconstruct it, oblige it.’
— L. Renée, Poet & Writer, lreneepoems.com
In Rhapsodies in Blue, poet Sean Murphy uses the subject of various legendary jazz, blues, and rock musicians as a point of departure for a series of colorful, often abstract, and thought-provoking poems. Particularly memorable are his offbeat portrayals of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Eric Dolphy, and Marvin Gaye, capturing aspects of their lives and music with just a few words. This book is well worth reading several times.
— Scott Yanow, Jazz Journalist and Author, scottyanow.com
Sean Murphy writes poetry loose at the hip, not quite a beat—more towards Wordsworth without the pomp. Now, he’s fun. Rare. Precious in poetry to lift us through the mire of pop culture. He’s never irreverent for mere effect, Murphy is meticulous and values quiet when the waves are all you should hear.
— Clifford Brooks, Author of OLD GODS, cliffbrooks.com
An extremely moving, beautifully written, heart-felt and touching chronicling of the life and death of a parent.
— Charles Salzberg, author of Devil in the Hole
When I started Sean’s book, I read a section and said to myself, ‘I’m going to email Sean to tell him how amazing that sentence is.’ Then as I read a little further I thought, ‘No, I’m going to email Sean to tell him what an amazing depth of knowledge and perception he’s giving us.’ And then, yes, you got it, on the very next page he wrote something that made me think, ‘His Mom is looking down on Sean with unending love for what he just wrote. This is one amazing book!
— Donald R. Gallehr, Director Emeritus, Northern Virginia Writing Project
Sean Murphy writes of his loss in a way that is compelling and insightful. Anyone early in the process of grief should hear his message—that you never get over the death of a loved one, and that’s as it should be.
— Elizabeth Rogers, Social Worker, Advanced Illness Management Program
In some moments of profound experience, we see and feel in extraordinary ways. That is what happened to Sean Murphy after his mother’s death. He has had the courage to look honestly at death, and the talent to express his love and grief in a way that will comfort and sustain his readers.
— Steve Goodwin, author of Breaking Her Fall
Sean Murphy brings a poetic voice and insightful contemplations to the largely unexplored territory of dying and death. With deep compassion and philosophical curiosity, he processes his individual grief while confirming the universality of loss.
— Roy Remer, Director of Volunteer Programs, Zen Hospice Project
As both the President of a colorectal cancer non profit, and more importantly a son who also lost his mother to this disease, I found this memoir emotional, educational, and edgy. I highly recommend this read for patients, survivors, caretakers, and physicians alike. Congratulations Sean, for this amazing story, your mother would be proud.
— Michael Sapienza, President and Founder, Chris4Life Colon Cancer Foundation
As an oncologist treating a difficult and often fatal group of cancers, I witness firsthand as patients and their ‘villages’ cope with the diagnosis. So many decisions, so much emotion, and everyone does it a bit differently. No one path will serve; instead it is a truly individual course we choose. Sean Murphy’s book is a great new resource for patients and families, and frankly for us all.
— Dr. John Marshall, Chief, Oncology at Georgetown Hospital
Please Talk about Me When I’m Gone, which pulled me in from the first page and never let go, is a mosaic love letter from a son to his lost mother, so everyone in the bereavement club should read it. But this memoir is also a thoughtful, compassionate meditation on being alive. I nodded in recognition, dog-eared pages containing lines I loved, felt my eyes well with tears. In the end you should read it for the reason anyone reads good writing: to feel less alone.
— Jenna Blum, NYT best-selling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers
Murphy has cleverly transformed Byron from Lord to dot-com shlub. Instead of chasing minotaurs through labyrinths, he hunts for meaning among the cubicles. Not to Mention a Nice Life is a wry, acerbic, and terrifying critique of the notion that there is really nothing left to critique. Modern Corporate America is less an enemy than a state of reality. They have won. We have lost. Byron, like the rest of the 99%, is left with layoffs, failed stock options and the slight possibility of love. Read this very funny book. Like, right now. And then pour yourself an ice-cold laudanum.
— Sean Beaudoin, author of Wise Young Fool and Welcome Thieves
Murphy has provided a wry sendup of the manners and mores of 21st century American culture, which inspects all the Prufrockian frailties and foibles we carry through life.
— Martha’s Vineyard Times
It’s early in that lamentable decade of the 2000s, and while the good times continue to roll in corporate America, they won’t be rolling for much longer—and no one knows it better than Byron, the Everyman narrator of Sean Murphy’s witty and wise firecracker of a debut. If you liked Joshua Ferris’s AND THEN WE CAME TO THE END, you’ll love NOT TO MENTION A NICE LIFE. Byron might not have a future, but Sean Murphy certainly does.
— Greg Olear, author of Totally Killer and Fathermucker
The world of work, life, and love changed seismically in the early 2000’s and Sean Murphy’s narrator Byron, like everyone else, has been scrambling to keep up ever since…or wondering whether keeping up is even possible. In Not to Mention a Nice Life, Murphy’s masterful storytelling takes us on an honest, searing, sardonic ride through the decade that wasn’t.
— Jeremy Neuner, co-author of The Rise of the Naked Economy
Sean Murphy’s NOT TO MENTION A NICE LIFE offers a voice rarely seen — that whisper of human suffering that comes from an insular heart. It’s as if the photo negative suddenly spoke, and claimed to be the real image, the real person behind the living color and magnetism of what we find in our everyday moment-to-moment existence. As Byron moves into and through his “Terrible Thirties,” and the dot-com. boom of wild heights and terrifying drops, we move with him… but we also get to watch, and be that cautious eye which only has to watch, and doesn’t have to be. Which is both blessing and curse in this romp of Americana, half FIGHT CLUB, half CATCHER IN THE RYE for the middle-aged. Regardless, I’m hooked — and want to stay that way.
— Jesse Waters, author of Human Resources
The musicians who Sean Murphy writes about set out, like so many of us, to change the world. Sean has the eloquent gift of letting you feel like you’re in the studio with them and then sitting front-row, best seat in the house, feeling the impact, watching them perform. Sean’s musical insight is a peek behind the curtain, a gift and rare view everyone wants to see.
— Cerphe Colwell, Legendary Washington, DC DJ
Sean Murphy’s work is a joy to read. He instantly and easily draws the reader into his world with authenticity and humor. It’s clear that Sean understands people — we often find a piece of ourselves and our lives in his words. At the end of each story I read, I wish there was more, yet still feel satisfied with the little gems of wisdom he imparts.
— Cat Beekmans, Elephant Journal
While there aren’t many political views that I agree with Sean on, there aren’t many things he writes that I don’t love. He makes me think by being reliably provocative, and he is occasionally quite convincing. Either way he is invariably amusing, thoughtful, and speaks past my brain directly to my soul — a talent that is rare but very needed in these times.
— Mike Shields, Senior Republican Operative, CNN Contributor
Sean Murphy’s sharp, insightful writing is as delightful as seeing a really good movie; you find yourself thinking about it for days afterward as your previously held assumptions and beliefs are challenged. The fact that he can shine a light as thoughtfully as he does on subjects ranging from music to politics and sports to literature makes Murphy’s Law, Vol One a real treasure; the kind of book you can dive into anywhere and find the minutes turning to hours as he leads you to places you never suspected you could get so caught up in.
— Robert Rodriguez, Beatles author and co-host of the Something About The Beatles podcast
Sean has a razor-sharp wit to match his intellectual curiosity. Consistently a treat to read.
— Jake Sugarman, Salon
"It’s not worth singing about if it doesn’t leave a scar," the speaker in Sean Murphy's Kinds of Blue says—and these poems are about song and scar, even as they sing and heal along the hurt-lines. Murphy muses about what drives us to art, what hinders art's making, what sacrifices art demands, what makes art, and the artist, endure. "It never hurts if you write an anthem," the speaker says, though the book is filled with artists who hurt, even to the point of self-harm and death. The poems here confront an "America waking up/ slowly, from the old school/ slumber of the whitest world," and comes to a reckoning: "again it was down to artists/ to guide us through." Kinds of Blue is a wise, startling, beautiful guide.
With Kinds of Blue, Sean Murphy has created a deep personal and spiritual meditation on the personalities, stories, and souls that created some of the most important music (plus comedy, film and more) of the 20th century. More than a book 'about' these other art forms, Kinds of Blue gives voice to ineffable and transcendent qualities of the art using the medium of poetry.
A transformative journey that not only unveils new dimensions to familiar tunes but beckons you to venture into uncharted musical realms.
Sean Murphy is a blues poet and jazz artist who touches our souls and enriches our lives!
— Dr Cornel West, Professor, Philosopher, Artist, Activist, cornelwest.com
These poems are Blackness, but more: everything from jazz to Malcolm X, the church to George Floyd. Gods and goddesses are here. Myths, mythmakers, and the mythological are here. These poems deal with jazz but more, they are jazz: badass, unruly, and smart. An important collection, an instant classic.
— Adrienne Christian, Author of WORN, adriennechristian.com
With plain-spoken verse that allows the subjects and their narratives to be centered, Murphy meditates on the genius, loneliness, delights, and refusals of some of the most accomplished Black jazz musicians of the 20th century. These poems dip and sway in tempo and temperature, ringing in the ear until consonant cacophonies sound like any good horn section. Here, we find metaphors through synesthesia, with sights and sounds merging into a kind of metropolitan celestial body of stars and space, as well as ripe comparisons to Biblical figures, Greek mythologies, and the larger cosmos. But the speaker always grounds us back to the body with riffs in the rhythms, disguised as asides or digressions in parentheses. We are reminded that these Black trailblazers could not afford to wait on recognition, but claimed space as great makers of art unabashedly, as Murphy writes: ‘…You can’t ask reality;/ you need to reconstruct it, oblige it.’
— L. Renée, Poet & Writer, lreneepoems.com
In Rhapsodies in Blue, poet Sean Murphy uses the subject of various legendary jazz, blues, and rock musicians as a point of departure for a series of colorful, often abstract, and thought-provoking poems. Particularly memorable are his offbeat portrayals of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Eric Dolphy, and Marvin Gaye, capturing aspects of their lives and music with just a few words. This book is well worth reading several times.
— Scott Yanow, Jazz Journalist and Author, scottyanow.com
Sean Murphy writes poetry loose at the hip, not quite a beat—more towards Wordsworth without the pomp. Now, he’s fun. Rare. Precious in poetry to lift us through the mire of pop culture. He’s never irreverent for mere effect, Murphy is meticulous and values quiet when the waves are all you should hear.
— Clifford Brooks, Author of OLD GODS, cliffbrooks.com
An extremely moving, beautifully written, heart-felt and touching chronicling of the life and death of a parent.
— Charles Salzberg, author of Devil in the Hole
When I started Sean’s book, I read a section and said to myself, ‘I’m going to email Sean to tell him how amazing that sentence is.’ Then as I read a little further I thought, ‘No, I’m going to email Sean to tell him what an amazing depth of knowledge and perception he’s giving us.’ And then, yes, you got it, on the very next page he wrote something that made me think, ‘His Mom is looking down on Sean with unending love for what he just wrote. This is one amazing book!
— Donald R. Gallehr, Director Emeritus, Northern Virginia Writing Project
Sean Murphy writes of his loss in a way that is compelling and insightful. Anyone early in the process of grief should hear his message—that you never get over the death of a loved one, and that’s as it should be.
— Elizabeth Rogers, Social Worker, Advanced Illness Management Program
In some moments of profound experience, we see and feel in extraordinary ways. That is what happened to Sean Murphy after his mother’s death. He has had the courage to look honestly at death, and the talent to express his love and grief in a way that will comfort and sustain his readers.
— Steve Goodwin, author of Breaking Her Fall
Sean Murphy brings a poetic voice and insightful contemplations to the largely unexplored territory of dying and death. With deep compassion and philosophical curiosity, he processes his individual grief while confirming the universality of loss.
— Roy Remer, Director of Volunteer Programs, Zen Hospice Project
As both the President of a colorectal cancer non profit, and more importantly a son who also lost his mother to this disease, I found this memoir emotional, educational, and edgy. I highly recommend this read for patients, survivors, caretakers, and physicians alike. Congratulations Sean, for this amazing story, your mother would be proud.
— Michael Sapienza, President and Founder, Chris4Life Colon Cancer Foundation
As an oncologist treating a difficult and often fatal group of cancers, I witness firsthand as patients and their ‘villages’ cope with the diagnosis. So many decisions, so much emotion, and everyone does it a bit differently. No one path will serve; instead it is a truly individual course we choose. Sean Murphy’s book is a great new resource for patients and families, and frankly for us all.
— Dr. John Marshall, Chief, Oncology at Georgetown Hospital
Please Talk about Me When I’m Gone, which pulled me in from the first page and never let go, is a mosaic love letter from a son to his lost mother, so everyone in the bereavement club should read it. But this memoir is also a thoughtful, compassionate meditation on being alive. I nodded in recognition, dog-eared pages containing lines I loved, felt my eyes well with tears. In the end you should read it for the reason anyone reads good writing: to feel less alone.
— Jenna Blum, NYT best-selling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers
Murphy has cleverly transformed Byron from Lord to dot-com shlub. Instead of chasing minotaurs through labyrinths, he hunts for meaning among the cubicles. Not to Mention a Nice Life is a wry, acerbic, and terrifying critique of the notion that there is really nothing left to critique. Modern Corporate America is less an enemy than a state of reality. They have won. We have lost. Byron, like the rest of the 99%, is left with layoffs, failed stock options and the slight possibility of love. Read this very funny book. Like, right now. And then pour yourself an ice-cold laudanum.
— Sean Beaudoin, author of Wise Young Fool and Welcome Thieves
Murphy has provided a wry sendup of the manners and mores of 21st century American culture, which inspects all the Prufrockian frailties and foibles we carry through life.
— Martha’s Vineyard Times
It’s early in that lamentable decade of the 2000s, and while the good times continue to roll in corporate America, they won’t be rolling for much longer—and no one knows it better than Byron, the Everyman narrator of Sean Murphy’s witty and wise firecracker of a debut. If you liked Joshua Ferris’s AND THEN WE CAME TO THE END, you’ll love NOT TO MENTION A NICE LIFE. Byron might not have a future, but Sean Murphy certainly does.
— Greg Olear, author of Totally Killer and Fathermucker
The world of work, life, and love changed seismically in the early 2000’s and Sean Murphy’s narrator Byron, like everyone else, has been scrambling to keep up ever since…or wondering whether keeping up is even possible. In Not to Mention a Nice Life, Murphy’s masterful storytelling takes us on an honest, searing, sardonic ride through the decade that wasn’t.
— Jeremy Neuner, co-author of The Rise of the Naked Economy
Sean Murphy’s NOT TO MENTION A NICE LIFE offers a voice rarely seen — that whisper of human suffering that comes from an insular heart. It’s as if the photo negative suddenly spoke, and claimed to be the real image, the real person behind the living color and magnetism of what we find in our everyday moment-to-moment existence. As Byron moves into and through his “Terrible Thirties,” and the dot-com. boom of wild heights and terrifying drops, we move with him… but we also get to watch, and be that cautious eye which only has to watch, and doesn’t have to be. Which is both blessing and curse in this romp of Americana, half FIGHT CLUB, half CATCHER IN THE RYE for the middle-aged. Regardless, I’m hooked — and want to stay that way.
— Jesse Waters, author of Human Resources
The musicians who Sean Murphy writes about set out, like so many of us, to change the world. Sean has the eloquent gift of letting you feel like you’re in the studio with them and then sitting front-row, best seat in the house, feeling the impact, watching them perform. Sean’s musical insight is a peek behind the curtain, a gift and rare view everyone wants to see.
— Cerphe Colwell, Legendary Washington, DC DJ
Sean Murphy’s work is a joy to read. He instantly and easily draws the reader into his world with authenticity and humor. It’s clear that Sean understands people — we often find a piece of ourselves and our lives in his words. At the end of each story I read, I wish there was more, yet still feel satisfied with the little gems of wisdom he imparts.
— Cat Beekmans, Elephant Journal
While there aren’t many political views that I agree with Sean on, there aren’t many things he writes that I don’t love. He makes me think by being reliably provocative, and he is occasionally quite convincing. Either way he is invariably amusing, thoughtful, and speaks past my brain directly to my soul — a talent that is rare but very needed in these times.
— Mike Shields, Senior Republican Operative, CNN Contributor
Sean Murphy’s sharp, insightful writing is as delightful as seeing a really good movie; you find yourself thinking about it for days afterward as your previously held assumptions and beliefs are challenged. The fact that he can shine a light as thoughtfully as he does on subjects ranging from music to politics and sports to literature makes Murphy’s Law, Vol One a real treasure; the kind of book you can dive into anywhere and find the minutes turning to hours as he leads you to places you never suspected you could get so caught up in.
— Robert Rodriguez, Beatles author and co-host of the Something About The Beatles podcast
Sean has a razor-sharp wit to match his intellectual curiosity. Consistently a treat to read.
— Jake Sugarman, Salon