We expect strong blurbs; author has reached out to Natalie Diaz, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Juan Felipe Herrera, Matthew Zapruder, and Beth Bachmann, and his previous work has been lauded by Tracy K. Smith, Brenda Shaughnessy, and Nick Flynn Author’s previous work has been reviewed by Salon, Esquire , Guernica, Library Journal , Denver Post , and Minneapolis Star Tribune Author has been widely published in BOMB Magazine , Best American Poetry , Pleiades , and elsewhere Book’s departure from...
In Fancy Beasts, the author of Hallelujah Blackout and Mosquito takes on California, the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism — in short, the modern American media culture, which provides obscene foil for his personal legacies of violence and violation. This pivotal book captures the turning point in a life of abuse, in which the recovering victim/perpetrator puzzles through the paradigm of son-to-husband-to-father. Frenetic,...
In his first collection since Fancy Beasts, a book that «slice[d] straight through nerve and marrow on its way to the heart and mind of the matter» (Tracy K. Smith), Alex Lemon dazzles us again with his exuberance and candor. Whether in unrestrained descriptions of sensory overload or tender meditations on fatherhood and mortality, Lemon blurs that nebulous line between the personal and the pop-cultural. These poems are full of frenetic energy and images pleasantly, strangely colliding: jigsaws...
