Gurlesque

Dear Few Readers,

There is a new anthology I want you to buy. It's called Gurlesque, edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg.

The Gurlesque aesthetic is, I feel, the most interesting thing happening in poetry today. It combines in-your-face perversion and aggressive use of syntax with a carnivalesque commentary on what it means to be female today and ever. Now you may wonder why should I care, being a pre-dead white male poet. Well foremost, the dudes are not bringing the game when it comes to sheer imagination, intensity, and complexity these days. A lot of poetry that appears in the mainstream journals is a tad bland, either hearkening back to a type of American plainstyle poetry (with its interest in wit and the everyday sublime) or an over-indulgent self-referentiality that is hip and insincere (not that I have anything against being indulgent or self-referential, just the popular, hip for hipness' sake stuf). The Gurlesque material, however, is what is in the edgier, more captivating journals. Or not. Because some of the stuff in this book is just too hot, too awesome, too "experimental" for most journals to handle.

Secondly, for anyone who is a sexual being, this book is a must. It evocatively explores the erotic politics of the body, of the public glamorized and demonized image, and of what it means to grow up and go through puberty (which is a weirder experience than we care to admit).

I've only just started the anthology, but I am sinking my teeth into it's page-flesh nightly. Poets include Ariana Reines, Brenda Shaugnessy, Matthea Harvey, Danielle Pafunda, and many more. I've read Glenum's crazy-good Maximum Gaga and while none of her poems are in the anthology, her treatise on the grotesque is inside. I'll say more as I get even deeper.