Customer Reviews

Fancy Beasts

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Alex Lemon's work here is energetic and highly playful with language, full of small surprises and twists on familiar idioms. His ability to hold the tension between serious, cramped little meditions and the airy exhilaration of wit and acrobatic turns is to be admired. At once accessible and cryptic, these poems invite multiple reads as well as a smirk of pleasure and recognition throughout. The class clown is also a classic clown, pointing to tragedy with antics and muscularity and sometimes great beauty.

Pick any year, and you'll find plenty absurd, but 2008 seemed especially special. "Fancy Beasts" is a collection of poems from Alex Lemon, as he brings a focus to this year, with poems attacking everything form commercialism to politics, and so much more. "Fancy Beasts" is a pick that should not be missed, very highly recommended. "All of the Made Roads": Choosing/my life, I drop//quarters in/the slot//& select/the worst//song on/the jukebox//& then sneak/out to//Watch/Through the rain-//streaked glass./O feverish//Praise -- I can/Feel night//Struggle/to Lay//Back in/its own dark.