Intelligent, intimate analyses of a gay life in rural America.
In a series of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award–winning writer and academic Mann (English/Virginia Tech; co-editor: LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry From Appalachia, 2019, etc.) explores the experience of being a gay man who appreciates conservative Appalachia.
“I own no Cher or Streisand CDs,” Mann proclaims early on, making it clear to readers who may be unfamiliar with his work that he doesn’t fit gay stereotypes. He doesn’t live in a large city, and he’s content with living with his “husbear” in the mountains of the Virginias, listening to Joni Mitchell, and reflecting on writers such as Wordsworth and Keats. Across 22 essays, Mann discusses religion, politics, and sex while addressing the seeming disconnect between his sexuality and the down-home world that he loves. Religion remains the thorniest aspect of Appalachian life for Mann, but in the essay “Surly Bear in the Bible Belt,” he smartly traces his sexual desires for stereotypically masculine men and bondage back to the rigid gender roles of fundamentalist Christianity. Politics, including the election of Donald Trump, are woven throughout these pieces, but they come to the forefront in “Confederate” and “Watch Out! That Queer’s Got a Gun,” in which Mann offers nuanced and surprising stances on hot-button issues. However, the author always wisely brings his arguments back to the personal, concentrating on emotions that Civil War pictures stir within him or how a gun can assuage his anxiety over potential homophobic attacks. His carnal desire for “burly men” comes up often, and it may be the one point that feels repetitive in this collection; however, he sharply analyzes it in the travelogues “Whoremonger” and “A Leather Bear in the Big Easy,” which call to mind the frank, revealing essays of Edmund White. Mann offers some of his best insights in shorter, more poetic pieces, such as “David” or “Country Boy,” in which he concisely relates that two aspects of his identity are intrinsically linked: “I’m country because of the men I’ve yearned for and the men I’ve loved.”
Intelligent, intimate analyses of a gay life in rural America.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59021-701-6
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.
Diehl’s debut poetry collection showcases the arduous search for human connection and self-understanding.
In free verse poems that combine strong metaphors with prosaic passages, the poet wanders along a lifelong path of self-knowledge. She first describes it as a “pilgrimage…to accept what’s been deemed unworthy inside us,” and the trail leads to important insights. In a plainly stated yet necessary reminder, the author asserts that being human, despite the loneliness one may encounter, “is not a solitary pursuit.” Above all else, the book voices a desire for transparency in the self and in others. In “Clear Stream,” moving water illuminates objects within it, even as mystery waits at the bottom, and the water’s clarity corresponds to the speaker’s offering of his- or herself to view: “Here I am. // Come see me if you want.” Sometimes the tumble of words in these short stanzas suggests a pouring forth of injury: “It’s the show-stopping blow of loss upending a heart pain over pain till capacity for love regulates its beating.” Readers will understand a back story involving love and loss, difficulty in communication, sadness, and acceptance of children growing up. The poems gain strength from well-chosen accompanying images, including sketches and paintings by Dimenichi and colorful works by Jamaican-born painter Powell that enrich the verbal landscape. Several full-page images by each artist appear, suggesting a thematic connection or amplifying an emotion in a given poem. A richly textured, grand illustration of a tree by Dimenichi, for example, appears alongside a poem that celebrates the inspiration of such towering entities. A poem concerned with self-reflection joins a Powell painting of floating, twinned female forms. The figures seem to both depict and satisfy the speaker’s need to be seen, with their emphasis on mirror images, body doubles, and echoes of shapes. Even the windshield of a car can be a “two way mirror” behind which the driver is “invisible to life outside.” An explicitly female body is glimpsed in the sketches, and the warm, dreamlike compositions give it substance.
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-304-13091-4
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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