Cover of Noise in the Face of, with expressionistic artwork with flora and fauna

Roof Books, 2016

David Buuck’s newest collection, Noise in the Face of, is aesthetically strong, political poetry at its finest. Written in Oakland during the early days of the Occupy Oakland movement, through the Bay Area protests in the wake of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and many, many others, Noise marries fire and form, going beyond representational aesthetics to craft writing that aims to be the thing itself.

“I don’t know when I’ve ever read poetry more completely of and in the streets—where the form and content of the poetics of the march and occupation and riot are so thoroughly merged. Squelch that cop radio feedback, turn up the Michael Jackson—the livestream is on and in your hands, comrade. David Buuck has his razor sharp eye and ear at all times on ‘what/’s beyond the shattered frame’ of mere representational aesthetics/politics: this is poetry bashed out on a burning piano as it hurtles downhill during an Oakland riot. I for one am more than a little excited to be along for the ride.” —Stephen Collis

Read a review on Lana Turner (PDF)

Read excerpts on:
Brooklyn Rail
Capilano Review
Armed Cell (PDF)


Cover of Site Cite City: a plain parchment cover with all of the text in a red circle like a rubber stamp

Published by Futurepoem Books, 2015

Entropy’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2015
SPD Handpicked Selection – September 2015
SPD Non-Fiction Bestseller List July-September 2015

“In David Buuck’s Site Cite City, the detective novel meets the essay meeting the poem in prose, which, somewhere along the way, has already bisected machine language and passed through the byways of psychogeography, making for a text as mysterious and entertaining as it is activist and knowledgeable. An invaluable contribution to everything.”  —Renee Gladman

“David Buuck works at the axis of performative and civic aims to make a narrative that is clarified the more it breaks down, as much through desire as by violent or revolutionary means.” —Bhanu Kapil

Read a review on Jacket

Read an excerpt on The Volta


Cover of An Army of Lovers with a black and white photo of a large group of protestors in front of a block apartment building, crossing a chain link fence that hand been pulled down.

co-written with Juliana Spahr

Published by City Lights, 2013

In the age of Occupy, An Army of Lovers re-asks the question, what is the relationship between poetry and politics?

“An Army of Lovers explores the liminal spaces where cities and individuals come together and stand apart with strange, brainy grace.” —Michelle Tea

“A rigorous book, and a book of marvels, with something funny, something painful, stirring on every page.” —Kevin Killian

“These are stories told with one foot in the Summer of Love and the other in the sewer.” —Adam Park, Eleven Eleven Journal


Read an excerpt on BOMB Magazine


Cover of The Shunt with a grainy photo of what appears to be several wax hands with gory wounds

Published by Palm Press, 2009

The Shunt provocatively explores one of our most ordinary experiences of social discomfort—embarrassment for the flailing comedian and his all too visible affective labor—in a strikingly intelligent and utterly heartbreaking way. For all its acerbic tonality, The Shunt’s affective agenda is thus the exact opposite of ironic cynicism, which is one of this brilliantly discomforting book’s most delightful surprises.” —Sianne Ngai

“With its stutters, fractures, puns, sarcasms, and ironies, The Shunt is part of a cluster of books recently written by US poets attempting to understand what it means to live in a country that is constantly bombing other countries. But with its relentless attention to the group psychosis that this state of siege induces in US citizens, The Shunt is also something sui generis. This is your brain on war.” —Juliana Spahr

Read a review on Jacket

Scanned copy on Archive.org


cover with the title in red text on a solid white background

The Riotous Outside

Commune Press, 2018


photo of a b/w flyer with grey background, with an orange and red cover with the title

Score for 2 Performers

With SE Barnet
Everyday Press, 2017


cover, 17 reasons why, with old marquee sign

17 Reasons Why: a visual archeology

BARGE/Mission17 Gallery, 2009


cover, with text in black on white

SITE/CITE/CITY

BARGE, 2008


cover, with two figures wearing hazmat suits in an outdoor industrial landscape

Buried Treasure Island: a detour of the future

BARGE/YBCA, 2008


cover with abstract grey image with grids of dots

Between Above and Below

with Amanda Hughen & Amy Starkweather
San Francisco Arts Commission, 2007


cover with a blonde wig

Paranoia Agent

OMG, 2007