Apocalyptic Swing Book

Finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.

Publishers Weekly

Muscular and musical, this second collection from Calvocoressi (The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart) combines boxing, Elvis, church burnings, sex and horses to produce a book that is pure Americana. Exploring the parameters of masculinity, Calvocoressi plays with the gender of the narrative voice from poem to poem, “Have you/ ever gotten hit or thrown against a wall?/ There's a sweetness to it, at that moment when/ your God would forgive you anything.” The result is a not unpleasant ambiguity. Unafraid of interacting poetically with severe subject matter, in “Fence” she describes the murder of Matthew Shepard in the voice of a disgusted everyman. “They took that boy and tied him to a fence/ and beat him till he didn't know his mother's/ name.” Boxing is the overlying theme of the collection; in “Fugue” Calvocoressi turns Rilke's “Archaic Torso” toward Duk-Koo Kim, the South Korean lightweight who died after a fight with Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini: “For here there is no television/ that does not see you.” Calvocoressi's poetic intensity makes energetic identity politics into verse: “Take my hand,/ take my whole life too. I've slicked/ my hair back, I've made myself/ a boy for you.” This is a compelling sophomore effort from a very promising poet. (Oct.)