Gabino Iglesias

[REVIEW] But It’s a Long Way by Frédérique Guétat-Liviani (translated by Nathanaël)

Posted on by

(Nightboat Books, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

—

Most poetry about interstitial spaces and borders explores the permeability of imagined borders, the effects of different cultures and languages on psychological and emotional states, and the (im)possibility of (un)traveling back and forth, of finding home again. Some, however, go further than that and tackle all of it at once while simultaneously inhabiting, literally, the dividing line between languages and a multiplicity of places. In the case of Frédérique Guétat-Liviani’s But It’s a Long Way, the writing is at once an exploration of borders, a scream against a past filled with the nonsense that usually leads to migration, and a strange biography of a life spent on liminal spaces.

Despite being about many things, But It’s a Long Way is mainly about the multiplicity of borders. Language and cultures are borders. People are borders. Poverty is a border. Everything is a border. Everything is a thing that separates humans in some way. They are created, suffered, celebrated, and forgotten. They change people and force them into actions that may or may not want. Of all the things they are, however, the most important one is constructed. Recognizing that they are constructed is one of the biggest steps a person can give toward a better understanding of how borders work, but it can also lead to frustration for a variety of reasons. Guétat-Liviani’demonstrates a deep understanding of this bizarre frailty/impenetrability that changes depending on a plethora of sociopolitical elements:

borders/they are forgotten/when/it’s

to judge a president/and then later/they are put back/to prevent

people from crossing

But borders are more than just dividing lines that impede free movement. They are more than places where one nation ends and another one begins. They are more than geographical spots where cultures may be different and a different language may be spoken. Borders, in this book, are looked at in all of their significance, and that means they are also seen as problematic sociopolitical spaces and places where bad things happen merely because of what separation entails:

sometimes/there are even wars/because of/the separations

there are also/the borders you can’t see/between arabs and

the racist French/it comes/from generalization/the terrorists

they say you have to kill/in the name of islam/so people believe

all muslims/are like that/but there’s also racism

on the part of/maghrebians/toward/others

Guétat-Liviani’ writes about Otherness with knowledge and authenticity. This book is at once a travelogue, a diary, and a mosaic biography. The reader is pulled by words through an epic journey that covers France, Spain, Albania, Morocco, Kosovo, Serbia, Chlef, Algiers, Belgium, England, and more. With the geographical changes come emotional ones, but also languages, and this book is packed with people who speak French, Arabic, Spanish, English, and Turkish. These traveling, languages, and experiences frame an underlying narrative about perpetual otherness, a unique story about exile that is at once personal and universal.

The second part of this book is in French. As someone who writes bilingual fiction, I loved that. Real discussions about being outsiders/exiles/migrants can’t be had solely in one language, especially when the artist initiating the discussion or sharing his or her experiences isn’t a native English speaker. In that regard, the second half of the book is a celebration of difference that also makes a statement: language matters when discussing other cultures.

While there is much to like about this book, perhaps the most surprising element is the amount of hope packed into its pages. Yes, there is pain, loss, and coping, but the heart of the narrative, just like that of the poet, are full of beauty:

being kind/being mean/it’s a choice/it has nothing to do/with origins

—

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. He is the book review editor for Pank Magazine, and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] Blackbirds by Greg Santos

Posted on by

(Eyewear Publishing, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

Greg Santos’ Blackbirds is one of those rare poetry collections that seems to hit the right length: long enough to be a book that leaves its mark and short enough to be read twice in a row and leave you wanting more. Also, it delves deep into the world of the poet, allowing not only the world around but also his family and the world inside him to share a space on the page.

Santos is hyperaware of his surroundings. He feels everything. The result of this is hyperaware poetry that bridges the gap between commonplace people and events and the kind of circumstance that earns a spot on our memory forever. The series of events and reflections shared here inhabit that strange interstitial space between the personal and the universal; holding your child, looking out a window, remembering a place, looking at a loved one. This personal/universal binomial starts early on with “I Have a Problem,” a poem that offers a condensed version of the type of thing Santos does time and again in the rest of the collection:

All I care about is everything.

I like to lie down and look up at the stars,

even when there are none.

I am almost nothing but thoughts and water.

I find mirrors unbearably off-putting.

My children find them droll.

Do you feel that too?

My left hand feels like a cataclysmic storm.

I will never tire of looking at my wife.

Her smile is like a constant sonar beep

in the depths of my chest.

I hear rain even when it’s sunny out.

Have you ever squinted at the ocean

so the sky and the water blend until

you don’t know where one ends and the other begins?

I’m doing that right now with you.

While navigating the inside/outside/interstitial space is enough to make this a recommended read, what truly makes this short collection shine is the way the poet deals with his unique and collective identity. Family, migration, discrimination, and hope are all present here, all dancing with each other in the present as they vocalize their ties to the past. For Santos, where you come from is as important as where you’re going because it defines who you are and informs what you do even when it’s not a clear element that can be easily explained or even remembered: “My family is from forgetfulness,/our geography forever shifting.”

Perhaps the best thing about the book is that offers a much-needed dose of hope despite carrying a good dose of doom. Every time Santos writes about love or his family or holding his daughter, he shows there is plenty left to life for, much left worth struggling for even when the darkness seems to cover everything. In fact, there is even a hint of humor when discussing the current sociopolitical state, which is very present in “MURICA”:

Rumor has it we are going to raise a barn.

Stay tuned. Have a beverage with me.

Pepsi says LIVE FOR NOW.

Living for corn syrup is vexing.

Our little American town is exhausted.

Please help.

Ultimately, Blackbirds is a short, beautiful collection that finds its roots in movement, love, change, and migration. Santos is a keen observer and a great chronicler of modern life who understands that looking at the mess outside his window is as important as feeling the warmth of his loved ones, and that makes his poetry as relatable as it makes it necessary.

—

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of the novel “Zero Saints,” the book review editor for Pank Magazine, and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

 

[REVIEW] The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon

Posted on by

 

(Riverhead Books, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

R.O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries is a dangerous novel. It pulls readers in with what appears to be a simple but effective plot, lulls them with a prose that constantly explodes in short bursts of poetry, and then drags them down, wild-eyed and incredulous, into a dark, scary, deadly place where shattered love, religious fanaticism, emotional trauma, and terrorism clash. With a strong religious undercurrent and a triumvirate of characters that allow the story to flow forward at breakneck speed, The Incendiaries is the kind of novel that announces the arrival of a unique, talented voice that is not afraid of the dark.

Phoebe Lin meets Will Kendall during her first month at the prestigious Edwards University. She is popular and likes to partake of the local nightlife as well as most of the social events the campus has to offer. However, despite being outgoing and sociable, there’s something at Phoebe’s core that she never shares: she feels guilty for her mother’s recent death. Just like her, Will has something to hide. He’s a bizarre young man on a scholarship who transferred to Edwards from Bible college after having a faith crisis and works as a waiter at a local Italian restaurant to make ends meet. Despite their differences, the two of them fall in love, but that love is threatened when Phoebe starts spending a lot of time with a secretive cult founded by a man called John Leal, a former student with an enigmatic past. However, the situation goes beyond mere jealousy, and when the group perpetrates a violent act in the name of their convictions, Will is forced to confront the fact that the woman he loves is capable of such a thing while also having to deal with once again being in the midst of the religious fanaticism he worked so hard to escape.

There are three elements in The Incendiaries that deserve a moment in the spotlight. The first is the use of language. This relatively short novel possesses great economy of language, but Kwon made sure that every word earned its place on the page. Short chapters and snappy dialogue help the narrative sustain its quick pace, but the author also manages to inject almost every page with a dose of poetry, and that’s what ultimately makes it shine not only in the moment it’s being read but also for weeks after as it is recalled:

“Once, while hiking with my parents, I’d watched a starling flock in motion, the confusion of birds mobbing about like nets full of fish until they’d lifted, all at once, shape-shifting into a braided coil that flung, agile, whip-tight, into the horizon. Pests, my father said—practical, as usual. But I’d thought it an astonishing sight, God’s design made visible, and that was what Phoebe’s playing felt like: the flight of notes rising into shape, a large purpose made plain.”

The second element is the three characters at the center of the novel, which are very different from each other and used in different ways. Will is the main narrator, Phoebe is the changing mystery/floating question mark, and John is the drop of chaotic poison that triggers bad things. Besides the obvious trinity/religious theme, the interaction between these characters, as well as the way Kwon alternates their voices, makes for some engaging, haunting reading. Also, the way Phoebe changes is almost palpable, but there are signs throughout the narrative. Her thoughts are part of what makes this novel the type that demands to be devoured in a single sitting or at least as fast as possible:

“If I were less selfish, I’d have released the hold I had on him, this love-dazed Will, more child than man. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. He took the stairs to my suite at a full run. Bruises formed at the tops of my thighs. If I went to bed after he did, Will turned toward me, still asleep. I might put my head next to his, but he’d clamp his hot legs around mine. He hauled me in. I tried not to pull loose; still, I did. He protested. Insistent, not quite conscious, he reached for me again. I listened to his pulse. His soft, thin hairs, dandelions strands, shifted between my lips. I breathed them in. Here’s a wish, I thought. Don’t let me go. Until Will, I drifted; he attached me to this patch of earth. He clung all night.”

Lastly, there is enough darkness here to satisfy fans of creepy thrillers and even lovers of horror fiction. That Kwon keeps her writing comfortably rooted in literary fiction does nothing to diminish the impact of the themes discussed and the awful act in the last third of the book. This courage to take the story into very gloomy, dangerous, bloody places pushes The Incendiaries into must-read terrain. The fact that all this happens on a thick layer of religion is just a bonus and a sharp comment on our current sociopolitical landscape:

“The Lord had peeled the flesh of His corpse. He had spread it as a bloodied veil upon this earth, a flailed red carpet to ease His people’s fall. Others might ask how long, but he could wait. Faith is a long patience. Minutes tremble, he told his group, with the hope of revelation. Each particle of dust breathes forth its rejoicing. The stripped Nozhurst trees spelled out the Lord’s writing, if they’d learn to see it. God is, not was. He, John Leal, had called them as heroes. The Lord had laid His hands upon their heads.”

The Incendiaries is one of those deceptively simple novels that eventually turn out to be a multilayered marvel of interconnected narratives. The tale constantly shifts and, like a scared animal, seems to run away from the light that bathes it at the beginning and ends up curled in the dimmest place available. At once a love story, an examination of guilt and loss, and a sharp look at religious fanaticism once it abandons the realm of discourse and enters that of irreversible action, this novel is a superb debut by an author with an authoritative voice, poetic voice.

—

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of the novel “Zero Saints,” the book review editor for Pank Magazine, and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] They Call Me Güero by David Bowles

Posted on by

(Cinco Puntos Press, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

There are books that go beyond their intended audience and become necessary reading for everyone. David Bowles They Call Me Güero belongs to this special group. A collection of poems about growing up near the border as a bilingual, bicultural kid, this book is a deep, nuanced, heartfelt, and culturally rich look at the life of a kid that mirrors the backgrounds of millions of US residents. Between family, school, growing pains, and first love, They Call Me Güero touches on things all kids go through, but does so in a way that also appeals to adults.

Bowles writing is proud and unapologetic. This is his vision, pulled from his blood. In a way, the collection is a thinly veiled autobiography that offers a glimpse into life on the border, into families that are from, and belong, to both sides of that dividing line. That the frontera will be at the core of the collection is something the poet establishes in the first pages and reinforces throughout the text:

We have breakfast in our favorite restorán.
Dad sips café de olla while I drink chocolate—
then we walk down uneven sidewalks, chatting
with strangers and friends in both languages.

Later we load our car with Mexican cokes and Joya,
avocados and cheese, tasty reminders of our roots.

Waiting in line at the bridge, though, my smile fades.
The border fence stands tall and ugly, invading
the carrizo at the river’s edge. Dad sees me staring,
puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, m’ijo:

“You’re a border kid, a foot on either bank.
Your ancestors crossed this river a thousand times.
No wall, no matter how tall, can stop your heritage
from flowing forever, like the Río Grande itself.”

The beauty of They Call Me Güero comes from its simplicity, which hides a multilayered discourse. This is a collection about growing up in the interstitial space between cultures, in the space where languages intersect, and in the transitional time in life where magic begins to die and reality begins to set in, even if it’s still tinged with the fantastic myths, creatures, and fears of childhood. Bowles navigates these spaces incredibly well, showing that youngsters tend to fluctuate between micro spaces where little things mean the world and macro spaces where their past and present meet to tell them things about them, their culture, and even their future.

There is a kid at the center of these poems, but that kid simply acts as the filter for a plethora of events, scenes, and an entire family. Hanging out at the house, sending time with family, sharing meals, and learning about the past are all things we would like children to experience, and that experience here can be shared and explored within the context of Otherness. Sure, cultures and languages crash, but the result is not destruction; the result is a new way of life, an ever-changing mixed culture. Take, for example, the beautiful “Uncle Joe’s History Lessons”:

My uncle Joe
is the family chronicler,
a cowboy philosopher,
our local expert in
Mexican American history—
he lived through a lot of it!

One day we head to the river,
set up chairs in our favorite spot,
a shady refuge at the edge of his ranch.
“When I was a chavalito,” he says, watching
the water flow, “didn’t nobody teach us
about our gente, about the Revolución.
They made the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
sound like a blow struck for democracy
instead of the violent land-grab it was!
This should be México, m’ijo. The border?
It crossed right over us.

Es más, when I was in elementary
they didn’t let me call myself Jose?!
It was Joseph this and Joseph that.
So I became Joe. And forget using Spanish.
They caught you saying a single word, y
¡PAS! You got smacked.
Spellbound and angry, I ask Uncle Joe
if that’s why he never went to college
even though he’s so smart.

“Pos, si?. Also, nobody believed in me.
Fíjate. When I was in 7th grade like you?
Counselor asked me what I wanted to be.
A lawyer, I said. That white lady almost
laughed in my face. ‘What? No, Joseph.
You should go to a technical college,
become a mechanic. No shame in
Hard work!’ Vieja racista.

“Still, I kept at it, Güero. Studied hard.
But in high school? Turned in a paper
for world history about the Conquista.
I worked so hard on it, did research,
revised and edited, todo ese jale.
Know what I got? An F. I’m not kidding.
Teacher said it was too good.
Obviously plagiarized. After that, pos,
I gave up. Gatekeepers weren’t letting
this Chicano through.”

Then he leans forward and looks
at me, super serious, his eyes suddenly red
with rage or sadness or hope.
Even the chachalacas go quiet,
like they’re listening, too.
“Don’t you let them stop you, chamaco.
Push right through them gates.
It’s your right. You deserve a place
at that table. But when you take your seat,
don’t let it change you. Represent us, m’ijo,
all the ones they kept down. You are us.
We are you.”

Conversations, memories of stories told by grandma, games with friends; all these and more come together in this collection. They make it unique and universal, simple to understand and heartfelt, beautiful and ugly in many of the truths they carry. Since they were written with kids in mind, the poems have a Dick and Jane quality to them, but that only makes their enjoyment more immediate, the same way it happens with Langston Hughes work.

With They Call Me Güero, Bowles has added an important text to borderland writing that would have made the great Gloria Anzaldúa proud. This is a collection that resonates with readers, and that given the current political landscape, demands to be read.

[REVIEW] Blood Standard by Laird Barron

Posted on by

Putnam Books, 2018

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

An author known for his or her horror chops switching to crime fiction would be an intriguing development and something that would make readers wonder about the end result. In the case of Laird Barron, that was not the case. Barron is one of the most talented voices in contemporary fiction, and switching genre only means he gets to flex a different set of muscles. After reading Blood Standard, however, I’m ready to make a declaration that will send horror fans running for their pitchforks: I’d be perfectly happy if Barron only gave us Isaiah Coleridge novels for the rest of his career.

Blood Standard kicks off in Alaska, where Isaiah Coleridge works as an enforcer for the mob. He is big, bad, good at violence, and covered in scars that speak of a life spent hurting others and getting hurt in equal measure. Despite his hard exterior, there is a soft spot inside Isaiah, and that leads him to put a brutal end to the moneymaking scheme of a made man. The move makes him a dead man walking, but Isaiah has enough contacts in the game to stay alive, at least for a while. Beaten and unemployed, he finds himself exiled to a farm in upstate New York. Surrounded by animals and empty space, Isaiah begins a new life, one that is very different from the one he’s used to. Unfortunately, the peace is short-lived. When a teenage girl disappears, Isaiah tries to help, and that throws him back into the underworld he’s called home for most of his life. What follows is a maelstrom of action, crooked FBI agents, mafia dealings, Native American gangs, and secret agendas that hits all the right noir notes while offering a special combination of humor, hear, and mythology that could only have come from Barron.

The first thing that should me mentioned about this novel is that Barron did his homework before sitting down to write it. On the surface, this is a wild, action-packed, entertaining narrative about a man who is simply not built to stay out of trouble. However, once you scratch the surface, you’ll start finding a plethora of deconstructed/reconstructed noir and thriller elements. Yes, Barron left a few mobsters in sharp suits, the booze, and the high and tight haircuts in there, but he changed everything else. For starters, his main character is not white and he’s very educated. Also, there is a underlying discussion of how situations differ when filtered through Otherness. In other words, this is a narrative that is as concerned with big themes as it is with shedding plenty of blood, looking at a strange angle in terms of righteousness, and entertaining readers.

Isaiah Coleridge is a special character. He comes from a troubled past and has left many bodies along the way, but he is a good person. He is also a man whose scarred fists are as impressive as his intelligence, which is a rare thing in contemporary crime fiction. In a way, Barron used his literary interests to bridge the gap between his previous writing and his crime debut by showing that we are all still in contact/interaction with archetypal and classic narratives:

“The Odyssey,” I said. “It’s the precursor to Heart of Darkness. The sea voyage with all the evil kings and monsters, and screwing of sea nymphs and lonely witches. The revenge against the suitors. I was an angry kid. Revenge appeals to teenagers. I admired Odysseus, but my heart went out to put-upon Polyphemus. Trespassing Greeks eat his mutton and drink his wine, stab him in the eye, and sale of merry as you please. The other Cyclops laughed. He got a raw deal. That said, I’m still more in Camp Hercules than Camp Odysseus.”

While Coleridge is reason enough to make this a recommended read, the rest of the things Barron does well push this novel into must-read territory. He understands the poetry of violence and is not afraid of gory descriptions of it. The dialogue is superb, matching the humor and electricity so far found almost exclusively in conversations between Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard characters in their famous series. Lastly, there is the writing itself. Barron is a household name because he can spin a tale in a unique way and his writing is always top-notch, and that is once again in full display here:

“I returned to my meditation and visualized our vehicle as seen from the eye of a crow. So fragile and insignificant amidst the thunder, the rushing wind, and the infrequent strokes of lightning. Three men connected tenuously by loose affiliation and camaraderie were headed directly into the belly of the beast on behalf of a young woman none of them called blood. I bore witness to a strange and wondrous event that felt suspiciously like a miracle. Rain dappled skull patterns upon the glass. That omen concerned me not a whit. I opened my mouth wide and took in several gulps of oxygen.”

If you mixed together the best violent portions of the John Wick movies, the almost inscrutable nature of vengeance as it is dealt with in Greek mythology, the tension and darkness that has always characterized Barron’s horror writing, and the sine qua non elements of all best-selling thrillers, you’d only begin to approximate what Blood Standard has to offer. The rest of it is worth discovering by reading it, which is something you should do as soon as possible.

 

[REVIEW] Nails by Emma Alice Johnson

Posted on by

 

Lazy Fascist Press, 2017

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

Imagine you have a life. You work, spend time with friends, and love your family. Now imagine there is someone else inside you, someone who you are too afraid to show everyone else. However, the person inside you is a huge part of who you truly are, so you have to run away to another state in order to let this person out once in a while. This horrible scenario is the backdrop for Nails, a rough-yet-hilarious novella about a trans person learning to navigate a world of inside/outside dichotomies, fear, pain, beautiful nails, and acceptance.

Nails has a deceptively simple plot: Johnson goes out to Los Angeles to enjoy a weekend of long nails, dresses, music, and being in the company of other trans folks. However, not everything goes according to plan, and between too-long nails, folks screaming at her, and one trans person who keeps leaving her hanging after they make plans time and again, the narrative becomes a vehicle to explore the inner life of someone forced to hide and the possibilities of a future out in the open.

Nails, which comes it at just 80 pages, is a quick read, but it lingers for a while after the last page has been turned. Johnson is brutally honest. There is nothing she won’t discuss in this novella, and that makes for a very interesting read, as well as one in which cringing is as common as laughing out loud. This balance is strange given the subject at hand, which constantly reminds the reader of how awful people can be when confronted with someone’s who is different, but Johnson’s straightforward storytelling and raw honesty help readers who understand her sympathize and, hopefully, helps those unfamiliar with trans folks understand a bit more about their frame of mind:

“I try not to get too caught up in pronouns though. I don’t hate being a “he.” I just hate that my masculinity is such a hindrance to my femininity. I wish I could wake up each morning and decide whether I wanted to be a girl or a boy, depending on what part of me wanted to be in control. Sometimes I wish I did hate my masculinity. I wish I could say that I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body. Then I’d have an easier time – well, definitely not easier. But if I felt like a woman all the time, instead of some of the time, at least I’d know I wanted to start popping hormones and growing boobs. Sometimes I feel like I should just assert toward female, but I couldn’t do that, because then I’d be subverting my masculine side, and I don’t want to. I like him. He’s just a bit of a bully. Arg. Men, right?”

Plenty has been written about the trans experience, but Nails offers something new and unique. This isn’t a serious essay about discrimination. This isn’t about the physical realities of a very tall man stepping into high heels and getting long nails done. This isn’t about the way we are sometimes forced to hide our true self from others. This isn’t an academic deconstruction of masculinity as it relates to the trans experiences. This isn’t a funny story about a trans person escaping reality and having the world constantly collapse around her. No, this is all of that and more. This is all of that and a very personal look at a life in secret. This is all of that and a window into someone’s life a bit before they decided to stop living this way and announced to the world who they really were. This is all of that and an emotional, hilarious, incredibly sad, sometimes angering narrative of a real double life and the conflicting emotions constantly swirling at its center:

“Oh shit, now I’m crying. Big fat tears are bouncing down my cheeks. Snot is crawling from my nostrils. This is a full-on balling session. All I can do is go with it. Here I am, by myself, in this rental car that smells empty, in a city where I don’t know anyone and nobody knows me, in a fucking world where nobody knows me, the real me, because this is the real me, a big fucking makeup-covered ball of emotions, and I hate it. I hate that this is what I have to do. But it is what I have to do. It’s what I’ve always had to do since I was a kid, so I can either fight against it – and I’ve tried that, I’ve tried so hard – or I can deal with it the best I can. And it’s going to continue to be awkward. And it’s going to continue to hurt. But I have no choice. I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live like this.”

This is a frightening novella; a real slice of life filtered through a unique experience but full of humanity and humor that acts as a shield against the world. More than that, this is precisely the kind of narrative that should be read and shared as it can help everyone understand a bit more about a specific type of Otherness, and how the person inhabiting it deals with what the world throws their way.

[REVIEW] The Wild Inside by Jamey Bradbury

Posted on by

William Morrow, 2018

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

Jamey Bradbury’s The Wild Inside is one of those rare narratives that constantly morphs and reveals itself in new skin while still retaining a few secrets and surprises at it’s core. Beautifully written and packing an ending that is as heart-wrenching as it is poetic, this debut novel is the kind of debut that makes promises while screaming from the top of the mountain that a new voice is here, and it deserves to be heard.

Tracy Petrikoff spends her life between the forests surrounding her family’s home and the running dogs that share the property with them. Things like parties, education, and boyfriends are not on her agenda. Instead, she lives for the wilderness, the cold wind in her face, and the sounds of the forest as she zooms by on the back of her sled. Her days are spent tracking animals, running with her dogs, dreaming about racing in the Iditarod, and in the company of her father and brother, both of whom are, like her, still reeling from the unexpected loss of her mother to a car accident. While the loss was tough on everyone, it was especially so for Tracy because she and her mother shared a deeper connection, something that made them special and that Tracy now wishes she could ask about a bit more. The thing that brought them closer together had some rules. Chief among them was: never make a person bleed. Unfortunately, when Tracy has a quick, bizarre, violent encounter with a man in the woods, she breaks this rule. The event ends with Tracy knocked out after her head hits a gnarly root and waking up to silent woods and the man’s backpack, which he left behind during his escape. However, that ending was just the beginning of something else. The next day, the man shows up at their property and quickly passes out from his wounds. Where they caused by Tracy? What exactly happened in the woods? With the man in the hospital, a mysterious youngster appears at their home, looking for a job. The kid, Jesse Goodwin, is a hard worker and gets along with Mr. Petrikoff immediately, but there is something about his story that doesn’t add up. Between figuring out the truth about Jesse, learning to keep her impulses under control, his father’s new love, and the fear that the man in the hospital will soon return to get his backpack, which Tracy has under her bed, the narrative begins to spiral into a maelstrom of loss, doubt, and secrets that crescendos into an unexpected, explosive finale.

There is something unique about Tracy’s voice. It’s is at once uneducated and poetic, truthful and given to counterproductive inner dialogues, always doubting but somehow sure of what she hides from others and only lets out in the woods. That voice makes her a likeable character from the first page, and that likeability never diminishes, which leads to the novel’s last third to feel like a stab wound to the heart. Simply put, The Wild Inside is a narrative about growing up, but one that packs more loss, tension, and strangeness than normal. In fact, it is so like other coming of age narratives that even drinking the blood of animals out in the woods quickly becomes something we accept as a normal part of Tracy’s abnormal life:

“The other kind of learning, you drink it in, too. It’s warm and it spreads through you, wakes up your muscles and sharpens your mind, and you can see clearly, not just with your eyes but with your whole self, and then you know what you didn’t before. How a squirrel plans its route from branch to branch. How a mouse will hear you before it ever sees you. How a snowshoe hare knows to run in a zigzag, not in a straight line, to confuse its predator. Every piece of knowing makes the next hunt easier.”

On the surface, The Wild Inside has everything it needs to be a successful novel: it’s entertaining, the writing pulls you in, the backdrop is beautiful and wild, the dogs are a pleasure to be around even if you can’t touch them, and every character is multilayered. However, Bradbury takes things a step further by tackling the nature of righteous violence, the way our ow imagination can get the best of us and make good people do horrible things, and the unexpected ways a loss can affect the internal dynamics of a household. Lastly, it also deals with Otherness in the form of Jesse, who hides a secret as deep as any Tracy hides. This character evolves and the writing follows, making a strong case for the inherent normalcy in Otherness. There is no judgement here, only a youngster coming to terms with what he is in a world that often refuses to understand people like him. Ultimately, the way Bradbury deals with Jesse pushes the novel into the absolute must-read category:

“But once he started living the way he was meant to live, things changed. He didn’t have to explain to me how he’d new words like girl and she and her didn’t fit him, no matter what other people said, or why you giving himself a buzz cut at thirteen felt so good. You’ll look ridiculous in your Easter dress, his mother had said and I felt the sting of her words, all the lightness an joy a gone out of him when he seen the disappointment on her face.”

There is a lot of blood in The Wild Inside, but every drop is spilled with a purpose. Similarly, every word, every passage, and every action in the narrative has a reason, and that makes the last third of the novel work so well. When you don’t know all the facts, being right, fearing things, and planning are all floating signifiers with closed eyes. That Bradbury delivered a gripping story in which all of these play a major role is a testament to her talent, and a clear sign that she is here to stay.

 

 

 

[REVIEW] Standard Loneliness Package by Michael J. Seidlinger

Posted on by

Broken River Books, 2018

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

Author Michael J. Seidlinger has entered the poetry arena with a book that, although he mentions in its pages might be his last foray into the genre, will leave a mark with readers. Standard Loneliness Package is a collection of epistolary poems, a recipe book for loneliness, a bestiary of errors and regrets, and a deep, personal exploration of our innate ability to fail at connecting with others or sabotage any meaningful connection we someone manage to achieve.

What makes Standard Loneliness Package especial is not the people that are at the center of every poem but the way Seidlinger processes his role in the time period he spent/spends with that individual. His faults are at the core of the collection, exposed and raw, aching to be deconstructed and understood, blatantly questioning themselves, and wallowing in a combination of regret, loneliness, grief, and even a touch of sarcasm.

The poems in this collection are about every conceivable element of human interaction. In some, Seidlinger appears as victim. In others, he is clearly responsible for everything that went wrong. The result is a narrator that is constantly asking why things went wrong and answering his own questions (sometimes); a narrators that is at once victim and executioner, that confesses and apologizes before asking a rhetorical question and smirking at his own mischief:

Do you know, I bet you don’t

But do you know that every single time

Every single time

You knocked on my door

Or tried to use a credit card

To get into my room

I was there

Did you

I bet you didn’t

Standard Loneliness Package makes it easy to see that time is the great healer, and that it also sometimes acts as a microscope that allows us to study every small mistake we made. Seidlinger navigates the space between the past and the birth of every poem with grace, showing that he understands his own shortcomings but also explaining why some of the results he got were inevitable, and we this might just continue to be so. Furthermore, there is a hunger for change that pops up now and then, a realization that, once an error has been deconstructed and understood, there are ways to change it. However, there is something deeper, some profound understanding that we are the way we are and sometimes significant change is something that’s forever lost in the a sea of agitated stagnation. In “To Unknown (3),” we see this line of thinking clearly (and depressingly):

Why do I worry if these poems will be published

Do I quantify every single thing I care about

It is true

Every poem is an apology

It is true

Every apology is a poem I have trouble reading aloud

It is true

Every time I apologize

What I’m doing is hiding behind

The fact that I don’t know how to change

How to heal

How to show you that I can do better

It is true

This is the best I can do

It is true

The best I can do is never enough

It is true

To keep those I want close

It is true

To distance myself from those I shouldn’t keep

The last part of the book, which is a creative nonfiction piece retelling the month-long trip the author took across the United States as a social media experiment, breaks away from poetry in form but retains some of the preoccupations that plague the poems that precede it. Alone in a car for a month, moving from state to state and meeting people, Seidlinger was immersed in social media (even more than usual), and the writing that emerged from that experience is rich, deep, and breathtakingly personal. What is our relationship to social media? How is mediated communication processed in the soul? What is the true meaning of a “like”? What happens to those messages we send and are never answered? Why do we sometimes refuse to reply to a message? More than offer answers to these questions, the author delves into his own experience living for them in the confines of a car, the context of the trip, and the frame of his shattered life at the time the trip began. It ends up being a strange, somewhat touching finale to a book that celebrates the beauty that can come from writing about horrible things.

[REVIEW] The Möbius Strip Club of Grief by Bianca Stone

Posted on by

Tin House Books, 2018

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

__

Bianca Stone’s The Möbius Strip Club of Grief is a tricky, multilayered poetry collection that lures readers in with its ease of access and wild, entertaining premise before slashing their throats with sharp doses of pain, truth, and a its pull-no-punches exploration of grief. The books door open into the loud, colorful immediacy of a burlesque purgatory where everyone is either watching of being watched, judging of being judge (by other and by the inescapable self), performing or being part/witnessing a performance. It looks, sounds, and feels like a festive place, but the underlying pain is as present as a bad rash on the face. Take, for example, the stripper in “Lap Dance”:

I think everyone’s glad I’m dead, said the stripper

with the caved-in face. Her fingers were bone and no

sinew. She flapped her arms at the two wrens

caught up in the rafters, staring down

on the empty dance hall. Chirps rained like sparks

from the electric saws in their hearts.

No one here is glad anyone is dead. But

there is a certain comfort in knowing

the dead can entertain us, if we wish.

The vivid, somewhat chaotic first third of the collection is an illustrated map of the place. However, the spatial specificity begins to fade away as the writing begins to tackle a plethora of themes that reach beyond the confines of the imaginary place. Soon death, math, pain, Emily Dickinson, memories, insecurities, and even murder show up to make the universe of the place richer and to obliterate any sense of safety the imaginary walls may have granted the reader. Eventually, the writing inhabits different spaces that range from pure memory to poems that read like (de/in)struction manuals for loss, which is the case with “How Not”:

Be completely dispassionate about the theoretical five stages.

This is an old death, but it’s your death. Complete the stages

in blurring fits of inebriation. Eat everything in sight. Fight

with your mother. Marry Ben in the woods. Fly across

the country. Stand in the street with the raging legless

angel. Hold a brick wall very close to your face.

The success of The Möbius Strip Club of Grief comes from Stone’s ability to constantly surprise and entertain. Her mother, memories, literature, (self)destruction, grief, and confusion are some of the elements that give the collection cohesion, but they are always dealt with differently, so turning the page is always a new adventure regardless of the elements being dealt with.

As the poems progress, the reader becomes discovers the mother as an almost omnipresent figure, the poet’s knack for phrases that turn around and loop themselves, the brevity of some of the strongest poems, and even the bizarre, chameleonic nature of the collection. Then reader becomes part of it. Part of it comes from the fact that there is only so much grief we can deal with before starting to feel it ourselves. The second reason is that, toward the last third of the book, the writing touches on the universal, on the hidden realities that affect us, inhabit us, and shape us. The perfect example is “Apes,” probably my favorite poem in the book:

 

If it happened at all

it was the apes who won,

shimmering stark-naked

and sitting a little apart from Adam,

who was deep into his clothing

the cuff links and soft leather,

pulling the zipper up Eve’s back

and she, clasping the bra shut like a jewelry box—

 

What to do with this mind?

Throw everything

into the fire and scream

into the internet

that there’s nothing to do

but stand in the dark recesses

throwing a bright red dodge ball

against the bone facade

and fall in and out of love

with suffering?

The Möbius Strip Club of Grief is unique in its structure and execution, and proves that Stone is a voice to be reckoned with, a writer who’s not afraid of suffering and blood, naked flesh and exposed emotion, weirdness and ennui. Now enter the club…if you dare.

 

Appalachia, noir, and fishing: an interview with David Joy

Posted on by

INTERVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

–

 

I read a lot of crime, but few novels impress me so much that I find myself still talking about them six months after turning the last page. David Joy’s The Weight of This World belongs to that small group. While the combination of grit, superb storytelling, violence, and beauty make this novel a must-read, Joy is also a pleasure to talk to, so I decided to dig a little deeper into some of his passion, his writing, and books in general. Here’s what he had to say.

GI: The Weight of This World is beautifully written, but it’s also packed with enough brutality to satisfy fans of horror fiction. How do you achieve such a wonderful balance?

DJ: As far as balance, I think that largely comes from the writers who most influenced my work. I remember the first time I read William Gay’s short story, “The Paper-Hanger,” which is one of the most disturbingly violent stories I’ve ever read, but I was blown away by the beauty of his prose. There are lines in that story where he’s describing a murdered child in a freezer, lines like, “Ice crystals snared in the hair like windy snowflakes whirled there, in the lashes,” where Gay is very deliberately creating that play between beauty and horror. I think ultimately he’s doing this in order to make the violence more palatable. If you can achieve the right balance you can coax a reader through all sorts of darkness.

With the comparison to horror, I think that boils down to the realism of the violence. I don’t hold back or shy away from presenting something exactly as it is. There is no grace in dying. I don’t live in some fantasy world where people double over from gunshots and writhe then still like the old cheesy Westerns. At the same time, my work certainly isn’t gratuitous. There is a very real danger in sugarcoating violence, in repeating that John Wayne bullshit that glorifies and dismisses the act of killing as something trivial and easy. This isn’t violence for violence’s sake. I’m making very deliberate choices. In Where All Light Tends To Go, I had an eighteen-year-old narrator who was ill equipped for the violence he found himself surrounded by. I wanted the reader to experience what’s happening with the same sort of shock as the character. With The Weight Of This World, that novel is very much a sort of treatise on violence. I want the reader to walk through the blood. I want to force them to confront it and to ask big questions.

I think Dave Grossman’s On Killing is one of the most important books ever written about violence. Everyone should read that book, but especially anyone who is going to write about violence and the act of killing. Anyways, there’s a passage early on in that book where he writes, “They are things that we would rather turn away from, but Carl von Clausewitz warned that ‘it is to no purpose, it is even against one’s better interest, to turn away from the consideration of the affair because the horror of its elements excites repugnance.’ Bruno Bettelheim, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, argues that the root of our failure to deal with violence lies in our refusal to face up to it. We deny our fascination with the ‘dark beauty of violence,’ and we condemn aggression and repress it rather than look at it squarely and try to understand and control it.”

That’s why it’s so important to present violence in all its horrible ugliness, because only through capturing that reality can we start to have real, meaningful conversations about it.

GI: There is enough great literature coming from Appalachia to keep readers away from New York white-rich-straight-male-finds-himself-in-Brooklyn narratives for years to come. What is your role in that movement? Do you even consider it that?

DJ: Michael Farris Smith and I have talked about this a lot, about the void that was left in the South over the last few decades. We lost so many writers in just a few short years—Barry Hannah, Larry Brown, William Gay, Eudora Welty, Harry Crews, Tim McLaurin. I think if there is a movement, that’s what it’s a reaction to; it’s a matter of doing our damnedest to fill that void. When it all boils down to it, those are the writers who influenced me most. I’m rooted in writers like Ron Rash, George Singleton, Lee Smith, Daniel Wallace, Brad Watson, Jill McCorkle, Silas House, Tommy Franklin, and so on. I think for all of the writers who’ve emerged out of the South and out of Appalachia over the past five or ten years, those are the people whose footsteps we’re following. You come out of a place like this and whether you like it or not you stand within a shadow. You stand in a shadow cast by everyone before you and all you can hope is that your work lengthens it, that at the end of the day your work adds to that conversation.

GI: You’re a mountain man and I’m from a barrio near the beach, but it seems like we both grew up surrounded by struggle and a rich storytelling tradition. How does that upbringing shape your prose now?

DJ: I very much ascribe to that Cormac McCarthy belief that, “The core of literature is the idea of tragedy.” I think bearing witness to struggle can, as hard as it is at the time, make for damn rich ground to mine. We’re not talking about not getting the car you wanted for your sixteenth birthday, or having to hold off a few months to get the latest iPhone. We’re talking about missing meals, about deciding whether you keep the lights on or buy a few groceries. We’re talking, as Rick Bragg once put it, “about living and dying and that fragile, shivering place in between.” That’s pay dirt for a writer. And coming out of a storytelling tradition like the South for me, or Puerto Rico for you, I think puts us at a tremendous advantage. I can’t imagine growing up in a place where story didn’t matter. What a horrible, horrible life that would’ve been.

GI: Your career took off pretty quickly. This makes newbie authors look up to you and ask for help, tips, blurbs, and probably a connection. How do you deal with this?

DJ: I’ve been incredibly fortunate both for the success and for the support from fellow writers. The hard truth is that there are plenty of writers a lot more talented than I am who haven’t gotten their shot, and quite possibly never will. I have no idea what makes certain books take off. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what makes a bestseller. Part of it is timing, sure, but then I think about a book like Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me last summer. Flat out that was one of the top two or three novels that came out last year. It was that good. Period. Even more it was about a gymnastics family and it released a week before the Rio 2016 Summer Games Olympics. Talk about timing. By all reason that book should have been in the top five NYT Bestsellers. Who the hell knows why it wasn’t? And that’s not to say that book wasn’t well received, because it definitely was, and rightly so, but I have no idea why some books take off and others don’t.

As far as other writers, I’ll never forget what it was like when that first novel was coming out and I got a blurb from Daniel Woodrell. I mean I idolize him. To think that he read my work still boggles me, and he didn’t have a reason in the world to do it aside from kindness. Another one is Ace Atkins. I think he’s one of the most talented writers I know. I respect the hell out of him on the page, but even more so as a man. He could call me right this second and ask anything of me and I’d be there. I owe him that much. I feel that way about Ron Rash, Tawni O’Dell, Frank Bill, Mark Powell, Michael Farris Smith, Silas House, George Singleton, Megan Abbott, Donald Ray Pollock, Eric Rickstad, Reed Farrell Coleman who are all a hell of a lot more talented than me and were kind enough to read my work and support what I was doing. I know what it’s like to not have an audience, to not have any work out there on the shelf, and I’ll never lose sight of everyone who supported me. I carry that with me and I carry that forward. Bottom line is that if I can help someone I help them because that’s the way this thing works.

At the same time, it’s rare anymore for me to go a day without someone I’ve never met asking me to read something. There are nine books sitting beside me on my desk right now that people sent me to read. So the truth is there comes a time when you have to say no and I think that’s a hard balance to find. I think it’s hard for most writers to say no, because most all the ones I know and love and respect are first and foremost damn good people when you get to the heart of it.

GI: Fishing is at the center of your life now. Every fisherman in the world has a different answer for this, and I’m curious about yours: what is it about fishing that keeps you going back for more?

DJ: Maybe the most beautiful passage I’ve ever read on fishing came from Alex Taylor and I can’t remember if it was in one of his stories or from his novel, The Marble Orchard, but he wrote, “There was now in him the desire to wrangle one thing out of the dark waters and have it leap and fight and finally be subdued by his hand. Because there is a kind of faith with fishing. It is the belief that the brevity of all things is not bitter, but a calm moment beside calm water is enough to still the breaking of all hearts everywhere.”

I think it’s exactly that and it’s always been that even when I was a kid. It’s chasing the same thing that Buddhists are chasing through meditation, it’s that moment of absolute thoughtlessness when everything else disappears and all that is left is the present. For me, I have a hard time reaching that place any other way so I’ve devoted a great deal of my life to being next to water. That’s the only place where I feel at ease. Fishing has always been my center.

GI: There is no fiction like that found in the “true” stories told by fishermen. What’s the most outstanding/memorable/incredible fishing tale you’ve heard?

When I was a little kid I used to always get up early on Saturday mornings and watch all the fishing shows—Roland Martin, Hank Parker, Bill Dance, The Spanish Fly with Jose Wejebe, Walker’s Cay Chronicle with Flip Pallot—but I remember one time when I was really little seeing this documentary on PBS about a noodling tournament in Oklahoma. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone grappling catfish. People in my family jug fished and ran trotlines, and I’d caught plenty of catfish on rod and reel, but I’d never seen anything like that. I remember this one fellow on there saying you never knew exactly what might be in the back of one of those holes. Might be a catfish. Might be a snapping turtle. Might be a snake. He told how his brother stuck his arm in a hole once and a beaver got ahold of him and gnawed his forearm down to the bone clean up to his elbow.

Anyhow, there was a father and son fishing together and the boy might’ve been seven or eight years old, but they waded up to a hole and the father stuck his arm back in there and felt fish. The problem was that the hole was too deep and he couldn’t get back far enough for the fish to latch on. So this man took his son and shoved him down in that hole feet first and all of a sudden that boy got to screaming and hollering and the man dragged him out and that catfish was latched onto that boy’s legs. I’ve never seen anything like it. Here’s this father shoving his little boy down in a hole for a thirty, forty pound flathead to bite down on his legs. I just laid there in awe watching it, and I’ve never been able to shake that image in all the years since. Long story short, think long and hard before you go getting in a fistfight with an Okie.

GI: Your work is character driven, but there’s also a lot of attention paid to the beauty of each sentence, the cadence of each passage. How much of that comes out naturally and how much is editing/rewriting?

I think the ear for it comes naturally, at least for me. I hear a good sentence in the same way Thelonious Monk heard rhythm, or Dave Brubeck heard scales. Now I’m absolutely tone deaf when it comes to music, but I have a natural ear for language. Ron Rash talked one time about loving the way vowels and consonants rub up against one another. In the same way, I think I’m drawn to sound more than anything else, and that’s probably why I read so much more poetry than fiction. As far as writing it though, I don’t think that comes naturally at all. That’s very much a matter of shifting phrases, changing words, cutting articles, playing with things and tinkering with a sentence until there’s music. It takes a lot more work for me to construct a sentence than it does for me to recognize when one is working.

GI: Appalachian noir. Rural noir. Country noir. You fall into all of them and yet your work is clearly David Joy noir. Do you pay any attention to labels?

There’s a danger to labels that I think has led writers like Daniel Woodrell to distance himself from terms like “noir.” For too long merit has been measured by wine sniffing, elbow patch wearing, shiny shoed academics who turn their noses up to any label other than “literary.” Anyone with half a brain can recognize it’s snobbish bullshit. To dismiss someone like Ursula K. Le Guin under the guise of science fiction, or to dismiss a writer like Stephen King as a genre writer, that’s the danger of labels. Benjamin Percy had that great collection of essays last year titled Thrill Me where he did a wonderful service in addressing a lot of these issues. I think we’re starting to move away from that trend, and that’s a wonderful thing. I was on a panel with Megan Abbott in France last fall and she said she believed crime fiction had become the new social novel and I completely agree with her. So I guess what I’m saying is that as readers we need to be sure that we’re not carrying any sort of bias in regards to those labels. The book must stand alone.

At the same time, I’m not one to shy away from labels. I think my sentences stand for themselves and so if someone wants to talk craft we can talk craft. I like the idea of noir, especially as an emotional description capturing a sort of shadowed mood cast over a story. Benjamin Whitmer had a great essay a while back where he talked about the idea of redeemable characters and happy endings being a fairly new construct in regards to literature. Hollywood endings always hit me as such a cop out. So when a term like noir is used correctly I’m really grateful as a reader because it tends to point me in the direction of something I’ll probably dig. I also recognize that my work isn’t for everyone. I want to go to the darkest places imaginable and search out some small speck of humanity. I think it takes a brave reader to go to the places I want to take them. I hope there’s a payoff for venturing into the dark, and, for me, I believe that there is. Only through heartache and suffering do we arrive at any sort of philosophical awareness, and, in the end, that sort of revelatory moment is what makes it worthwhile.

GI: There’s a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to Appalachia, and part of that can be blamed on books that take place there and don’t understand the place, the people, the culture. Now that everyone writes about everything and everywhere, do you think authenticity still matters?

DJ: When I think of the truly great books, the truly great writers, I can’t think of one who wasn’t deeply rooted to place. James Joyce traveled all over Europe. He wrote Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake while living in Paris. But could you imagine him having not written of Dublin? You know, he said, “I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world.” Joyce’s idea that, “In the particular is contained the universal,” is exactly what Eudora Welty meant when she said, “One place understood helps us understand all places better.” I don’t want to live in a world where Faulkner didn’t stick to Mississippi. I don’t want to live in a world where Ron didn’t write of Appalachia. Those books are sopping wet with place. I think there is an incredible beauty in knowing a setting as deeply as those writers knew theirs. I think you can sense that connection on the page just as I think you can sense when someone’s bullshitting. There’s nothing worse than reading a book and having the language ring untrue. As soon as I hit that place in a book, I’m done. I’m not reading any further. Toss it to the fire. It’s kindling.

If the details aren’t right the reader will never buy the big lie. So whether the writer’s of that place or not, it goddamn better feel authentic.

GI: Your Twitter feed is a great place to find great authors other than yourself. Any names/books you’d care to recommend here?

I think it’s rare for me to find a book that I absolutely love, especially a novel. So I wind up rereading a lot more books than I do finishing something new. I go back and read Jim Harrison and Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy. Recently I reread Benjamin Whitmer’s Cry Father. I’m obsessed with Daniel Woodrell and Donald Ray Pollock. As far as novels I’ve read this year that I loved, I really enjoyed stumbling onto your work. Zero Saints is a wonderful read. I think the best novels to come out this year were Michael Farris Smith’s Desperation Road, Steph Post’s Lightwood, and Mark Powell’s Small Treasons. Frank Bill’s got a new one titled The Savage that’s coming out this fall and it’s brilliant. I think the best story collection I’ve read this year was Scott Gould’s Strangers To Temptation. I thought that book was wonderful, kind of like if George Singleton had written a season of the Wonder Years. I think more people need to be reading Robert Gipe, Crystal Wilkinson, Charles Dodd White, and Sheldon Lee Compton.

But I’m going to do this a little differently than most novelists and name five or six books of poetry I’ve fallen in love with this year. One of my favorite poets, Tim Peeler, has a new book out titled L2, which is a sort of linear, novel-esque story told through poetry and I loved that book. Gritty as hell and just damn beautiful. Another one of my favorite poets, Rebecca Gayle Howell, has a new book, American Purgatory, that’s incredible. I think she’s one of the most powerful poets at work. If you haven’t read her already, read her collection Render: An Apocalypse and you’ll fall in love. Recently, I read a beautiful book by a South Carolina poet named Kathleen Nalley. The title is Gutterflower and it comes out some time in September, I think, but her work has really stuck with me. I stumbled onto a poet named Adrian Matejka and read a book of his, The Big Smoke, which was sort of the story of the boxer Jack Johnson. A wonderful press, Hub City, put out a book by Ashley M. Jones’ titled Magic City Gospel, and there’s a poem in there titled “Sammy Davis Jr. Sings To Mike Brown, Jr.” that will wreck your world in fourteen lines. Lastly, I finally got my hands on Ray McManus’ Red Dirt Jesus. I’ve always loved his poetry, especially the poems in his book Punch, but Red Dirt Jesus was one of those books I found at the right time. I was finishing my next novel, a book that’ll come out next year called The Line That Held Us, and I read a poem of his called “Missing Curfew” and as soon as I read it I knew the final image of the novel, I knew how I wanted the last words to sound. I have Ray to thank for that.