Fancy Beasts

Fancy Beasts
Poetry

Fancy Beasts

“Lemon slice[s] straight through nerve and marrow on his way to the heart and mind of the matter.” —TRACY K. SMITH
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California wildfires, the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism—in Fancy Beasts, Alex Lemon takes on American media culture, the obscene foil for personal legacies of violence and violation.

The poems of this collection are a workout: vigorous and raw, frenetic and fearless. Yet they are also composed and controlled, pared down and sculpted, with a disarming narrative simplicity and directness. Even when dealing with toxic content—including the turning point in a life of abuse, in which the recovering victim/perpetrator puzzles through the paradigm of son-to-husband-to-father—Lemon’s point of view is always genuine and trustworthy.

A frank, funny, and inimitably frenetic vision of post-millennial America, Fancy Beasts is a stunning achievement from Alex Lemon.

ISBN:
9781571314437
Publish Date: 
03/16/2010
Pages: 
120
Size: 
5.5 × 8.5 × 0.31 in
Weight: 
6.1 oz
Author

Alex Lemon is a poet and the author of two works of nonfiction: Happy, selected by Kirkus as one of the best memoirs of 2010, and Feverland: A Memoir in Shards. His collections of poems include Mosquito, Hallelujah BlackoutFancy BeastsThe Wish Book, and Another Last Day. He teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University and is Associate Professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he lives.

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