Toy Fabels is Cass McCombs’ debut poetry collection. Reading Toy Fabels feels like traveling through McCombs’ singular itinerant experiences — high and low voices merge, as childhood and adulthood, the east and west coasts, paganism and religion, twist into each other. A central theme is memory, especially a sort of half-remembered, half-obscured — but never idealized — landscape of Northern California. This remembered landscape is always in flux, shaping McCombs’ poetic language. Within this unique place, Toy Fabels features a number of unnamed narrators — from delinquent graffiti artists telling absurdist tales, to Marquis de Sade’s shadow and echo, to a disembodied voice that provides the mythic grounding for the collection. Illustrated by McCombs, Toy Fabels’ brilliance lies in its embrace of the inexplicable and the ephemeral.

Cass McCombs is a musician from Northern California, whose latest album is Tip of the Sphere. Visit his website here.