Book Release: Taiko Quartz Beat by David Maruyama

Join us for the release of David Maruyama's Taiko Quartz Beat! 

Click "Get Tickets" to RSVP & pre-order your copy to pick up at the event.
Limited copies available for purchase at the day of the event.

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About Taiko Quartz Beat:

Taiko Quartz Beat is the result of several decades of writing extended sequenced poetry. The first poem is Quartz City, which is my version of a closet screenplay. It was originally conceived in the 1990s as my jazz improvisation of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland and my readings of English Romantic poets like Lord Byron and Percy Blisshe Shelley, who wrote closet plays (lyrical drama intended to be read not performed.) 

Graffiti Walls is the result of a combination of journaling and poetry. The other poems were the result of collaborations called City Dialogues, which was a project developed out of Long Beach State’s MFA program. Many of the poems have been updated and revised. 

About David Maruyama:

D Hideo Maruyama obtained his MFA in Creative Writing from Long Beach State under the guidance of Gerry Locklin and Charles Webb. He was a part of Aisarema, the nonprofit wing of the shuttered Amerasia Bookstore during 90s to early 2000s. It produced the Asian Pacific American Arts journal called dIS*orient Journalzine, and he was an editor. He was included in the anthology Voices of Leimert Park Redux, and he has completed a collection including a closet screenplay (screenplay meant to be read) and other poems through the Community Literature Initiative in 2024. He was included in the anthology, Long Beach Spits Fire, under his Instagram name, Roninpoet.

@Disorientjournalzine @Roninpoet

Praise for Taiko Beat Quartz Movement

"D Hideo Maruyama composes and decomposes the idioms of screenwriting, journaling and poetry to  explore multiple geographies--of the City of Los Angeles, the Japanese experience in America, and the author's own inner map of the world as he perceives it. He weaves together strands of time, culture, politics, economics, race, architecture, and entertainment, to create an awe-inspiring masterwork." —  Mike Bonifer, author of White Men My Age  

"Taiko Quartz Beat is a journey from Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon to a chess table outside of 5th Street Dicks. “Everything is a run-on… sequence… To see more - you must let go. You must hold on.” D. Hideo Maruyama has helped bring many legendary writers' works to publication and now it is time to celebrate the art of this poet, editor and historian." — Tommy Domino, author of Switches, Hot wheel Tracks & Extension Cords

"Here is a poet of quiet distinction — who recalls lost places, calls back into daylight the names of those left in shadows, calls out past histories. With a documentarian’s gift for story and photographer's eye for detail, D Hideo Maruyama (a.k.a. #roninpoet) returns to poetry after too long a silence yet resumes here with the unique phrasings first explored in his early work. I am honored to have been a witness to both stages of this long poetic journey, and like so many others eagerly await more compelling new work." — Grant Hier, Poet Laureate of Anaheim (2018-2020), author of "Untended Garden," "The Difference Between," "Similitude," "California Continuum."