Staff Pick
Anaïs Duplan starts off this little book with a charged essay on identity, gender, and performance, and then rattles off a bunch of short, probing poems that will reach far into your gut. But don't be alarmed — Anaïs has already dug through their own gut first. The poems are paragraph-shaped but they almost seem too bristly to be contained in that boxed form. The end result is a reading experience that is challenging, enlightening, and enjoyable. Recommended By Kevin S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Poetry. "Reading Anais Duplan's chapbook, you realize you are more than an assemblage of ideologies, a cellular plan, or even an estranged, familial relation possessing the accoutrements of a melancholic nation, but also, too, the glorious product of dense, self-referential layered texts that call to the surface your loneliness and feelings of kinship. Here are poems that revel in post- hybridity and borderless threnodies, and go straight to the stillness of the heart, to performances of language that are fierce and juicier than a papaya, and frankly, that one would only expect from a brilliant, young mind as theirs."--Major Jackson