| Title | : | Advice for Lovers (City Lights Spotlight, No. 7) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0872865819 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780872865815 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 98 |
| Publication | : | First published April 10, 2012 |
"What if I'm spirited away to live in a torch song?—Where the landscape is a lover's discourse? Julian Talamantez Brolaski has me in thrall! In this enchanting book, Julian jacks up the artifice and jacks up the feeling." –Robert Glück
"Advice for Lovers is the type of book that makes you see language with fresh eyes, challenging you toward something fiercer and more honest yet. It leaves you bruised and aching to be bruised again, and isn’t that what you were asking for after all?" —The Rumpus
Author of gowanus atropolis (2011) and editor at Aufgabe and Litmus Press, Julian Talamantez Brolaski studied with Nathaniel Mackey, Elizabeth Willis, and Robert Hass. Xe rejects gendered pronouns and lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at The New School.
Advice for Lovers (City Lights Spotlight, No. 7) Reviews
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Brolaski’s distressed and gilded englyssche can go “Hellespontine onna Trojan sibyl” but knows how “to be a common man in a dent truck.” It also knows that form’s for feigning, feigning fucking, and “to feign—not to fuck a form, Arnault/Is making shoddy deals.” Don’t let the four-letter fun fool you though; the advice here is really how “to hold a thorny thing tenderly,” salt mixed with sweet in “surly chivalry,” and to swoon without forgetting that “Love poetry is about knowing your references.” In the “sweet science of bruising,” Brolaski’s Einstein, test sheep, prof and champ: “Honey my prowess I take as it comes.”
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"Truly, these poems—all those in the book—are great, the naughtiest ones just happen to also rank among the most superbly supple display of an embrace of lyric language to be found in the work of any contemporary younger poet. Brolaski's gifted play of alliteration and syllabic deft shines with this collection. The power is immediate and raw."
-Patrick James Dunagan
"Sensuous in dawn, daylight, dusk and night, Julian's new book Advice for Lovers is a primrose-rich , self-indicating rite of passage that in order to progress, must pass well through itself."
-J/J Hastain -
These poems have the kind of Nabokovian, Joycean, Lorrie Moore-ean fun with words that they make you notice that the authors last last name is an almagation of "bro" and "lass" - which is appropriate, given that xe is genderneutral/genderqueer and really plays on all (not just both - all) sides in the game of desire. The poetry is sometimes more witty and funny than truly erotic - there's no dripping anything, really - but they are very sexy and just great fun all around. I feel kind of drunk after having finished this.
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Dirty, but somehow really intellectual too. If you're getting hot while remembering Ovid, something unusual is happening...
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A great collection of poems.
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811.6 B867a 2012
