Description
Poetry. California Interest. Finalist for the 2017 California Book Award. Alli Warren's I LOVE IT THOUGH looks hard at the material and affective world we've inherited, including the ordinariness of the sublime and the sublimity and transcendence of what's most ordinary. This book makes meaning of our contemporary moment, both sharp and vulnerable, concrete and musical. These poems are committed to living in the present, delirious with outrage and hope for something better.
"The speakers in this collection's poetry are not so aimless as they are helpless in what they are able to affect and change around them. This world is 'unworlding' and becoming unrecognizable as the elements of time, space, and even bodies and objects seem to warp and melt into each other, all becoming amalgamations and hybrid. Warren's book is a lovesong to the pre-apocalyptic children who dance anyway, simply because that is the way they have learned joy. The speakers have only known normal as it began to fray into the strange, and so have normalized it. Like myths of a previous culture, these speakers recognize that there is a disconnect of tradition and expectation, of 'propriety [turning] into property,' and to use humor and the grotesque as channels of translation for these 'sentimental feelings.' A small book with a hefty punch to the gut is always my favorite."—T.M. Lawson, Angel City Review
Author Bio
Alli Warren published Poetry Center Book Award-winning debut, HERE COME THE WARM JETS, with City Lights in 2013. She is also the author of I LOVE IT THOUGH (Nightboat Books, 2017), as well as numerous chapbooks. Her most recent book is LITTLE HILL (City Lights Publishers, 2020). She has edited the literary magazine Dreamboat, co-curated the (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand, co-edited the Poetic Labor Project, and contributed to SFMOMA's Open Space. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Harpers, Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, Best American Experimental Poetry, and BOMB. She has lived and worked in the Bay Area since 2005.
Author City: OAKLAND, CA USA