Description
Poetry. LGBT Studies. "In AN ELEPHANT'S MEMORY OF BLIZZARDS, Neil de la Flor takes on the inefficacy of gendered and hetero-sexualized expectations in the modern age. As the poem 'Shiva' points out, 'Somewhere between male and female, the soul lives unstirred by the memory of childhood // ....Somewhere between Terminal 2 and Terminal 3, the soul lives in a million humming humans who will pass through O'Hare in the third person.' Inspired in part by music and popular culture, de la Flor employs a brilliant aesthetic sprawl that teems with anaphora and bright imagery; yet within that, there is a rigorous (and ultimately elegiac) interrogation of reality. Pronouns are not to be trusted. You and I can be as close as a spliced consciousness, yet the we is not a harmonious plural. Personalities divide. Alternative memories emerge. Love is a code for lust, one speaker claims, but these poems never settle for hormones and juices. This collection is fierce."—Sandra Beasley
Author Bio
Neil de la Flor is the author of AN ELEPHANT'S MEMORY OF BLIZZARDS (Marsh Hawk Pres, 2013), Two Thieves and a Liar (Jackleg Press, 2012), ALMOST DOROTHY (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010) and co-author, with Maureen Seaton, of SINÉAD O'CONNOR AND HER COAT OF A THOUSAND BLUEBIRDS (Firewheel Editions, 2011) and Facial Geometry, (NeoPepper Press, 2006), a chapbook of triads written with collaborator poets Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass. He is the co-recipient of a 2012 Knight Arts Challenge Grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to found "Reading Queer," a new annual literary event to promote Miami as a center for LGBTIQ literature. He teaches at Miami Dade College and lives in Miami, Florida.
Author City: MIAMI, FL USA