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| These poems are sharp in perceptive insight, with an ability to use narrative, image and felt-life together in one purposeful whole. This is a real strength, hard to describe but readily perceived. Her range of tones is wide; she can move a reader to reflection, or empathy, or discovery, or even, at will and blessedly, to laughter. I've not ever met an imagination quite like hers--even when preposterous, without aggression, and inventive without whimsy. —Marie Ponsot, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award |
| In this striking, idiosyncratic first book, Jennifer Knox speaks from a deep immersion in American popular culture, both relishing the kitsch and clutter that surrounds us and seeing through it to a terrifying core. If Jeff Koons and R. Crumb collaborated on a book of poems, it might look something like this. —Mark Doty, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award |
| Jennifer L. Knox's poems are sexy, surprising and funny, and they give fresh proof that (in Blake's words) exuberance is beauty. —David Lehman, series editor of Best American Poetry |
| "Knox's first book, A Gringo Like Me, reads more like Richard Pryor with a MFA. But for all the blue humor, there's real craft on display…Knox has the ability to take a ridiculous situation and tell it in such a way that it seems real…[she] doesn't back off, doesn't blink." —Verse |
| "Because she makes it look so easy, it's easy for the casual reader to ignore the strength and grace in the lines of Jennifer L. Knox’s A Gringo Like Me, as she carries us from one fresh image to the next. By the second read, it grows clear that a deep understanding of form and prosody underlies what are crafted to resemble poems of loose spontaneity." —The Columbia Journal of American Studies | |
A Gringo Like Me
Poems
Jennifer L. Knox
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| Paper | 5.5" x 7.5" | 80 pgs. | ISBN: 1-932360-98-0 | List: $13.95 | 10/1/2005 |
Available on Powells.com, Amazon.com, from your local BookSense store, and bookstores everywhere!
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Featuring: Now available in a new edition from Bloof Books http://www.bloofbooks.com
About the book: Borrowing its title from an Ennio Morricone ditty in the spaghetti western Gunfight at Red Sands, Jennifer L. Knox's A Gringo Like Me contains poems at once raucous and sexy, tender and high. In favorites such as "Hot Ass Poem," "Cruising for Prostitutes," and "Chicken Bucket," Knox's speakers appear ornery, hickish, undereducated, misogynist, or worse, but each quirky character manages to elucidate a truth we're better off knowing, even if we'd rather forget it. At other times, Knox's lyrical "I" is downright pretty; in poems like "A Common American Name" and "Freckles" she charms.
Knox has collected dramatic monologues, personal lyrics, and even screenplays together in a single energetic volume for a genuinely surprising debut. Between the poles of her unique range, Knox straddles and tames what she may yet prove to be an artificial divide in American poetry: she's a former slam champion, but also a two-time contributor to The Best American Poetry; she's hilarious and performative on stage, but also deeply intellectual and formally in control. In A Gringo Like Me, Knox roughrides her muse at full gallop, shouting obscene slogans, bits of jokes, and sweet nothings at the top of her lungs along the way.
About the author: Jennifer L. Knox was born in Lancaster, California. She attended the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa as an undergraduate, and received her MFA in poetry at New York University. Her poetry has also appeared in the anthologies The Best American Poetry (2006, 2003 and 1997), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to Present, and Free Radicals: American Poets before Their First Books. A Gringo Like Me is her first book.
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From the book:
The Laws of Probability in Levittown
I've been smoking so much pot lately,
I figure out what my poems are going to do
before I write them, which means when I finally
sit down in front of the typewriter...well...you know...
I moved back in with my parents,
and I'm getting really good at watching TV.
Soon as I saw the housewife last night on "Inevitable Justice,"
I knew her husband was the killer and I told her so and I was right.
Remember whenever Jamie Lee Curtis would come on
TV and we'd yell, Hermaphrodite! all happy? I maintain
her father, Tony, is an American treasure, and have prepared a mental
list of examples why, so should we happen to meet again, my shit's backed up.
There were too many
therapists in the city--97% of all therapists
are certifiable ding-dongs by nature which is fine
if you live in Platteville, Nebraska, where there's only
like three therapists in the entire town
(the odds are in your favor) but if 10,000
therapists are lurching around the streets, chances are
1,000 will be 100% batshit nuts.
I had a choice between watching
Robert Frost talking about his backyard
on Large American Voices and Farrah Fawcett on True Hollyweird.
I chose Farrah, because I knew what was going to happen and I was right.
Here's something I've been trying
to work in: 10 rations = 1 decoration.
What do you think? 10 monologues = 5 dialogues,
10 millipedes = 1 centipede, .000001 fish = 1 microfiche...
I've got a million of those.
I wrote them down, back when I was
writing things down. But I've been thinking I should
tip the Dominoes kid more than a buck on 14. Should I?
Cruising For Prostitutes
Motherfucker. I just found out my boyfriend's a prostitute.
And we were saving up to go on a cruise.
I went and got all these brochures
from the travel agent on my lunch hour.
Billy introduced and that motherfucker never said,
"Steve, meet Chet--he's a prostitute."
I think I would've remembered that.
I met Chet's family once, and they all seemed
perfectly normal. Not like prostitutes
or people who'd encourage
their son to become a prostitute.
But now that I think back on it, he never seemed
like he was paying attention, and he never got
mad. I thought he was just
stupid. So now I don't know
shit: are we still
going out? Is he going
to keep on being a prostitute?
Did that motherfucker Billy
know? Does Chet's family
know? Who else
knows? Has he even looked at
any of the brochures I brought home?
So what's it going to be?
The Fun Ship or the Love Boat?
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