University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012 eISBN: 978-0-8229-7845-9 | Paper: 978-0-8229-6219-9 Library of Congress Classification PS3619.M536A86 2012 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Appetite is a book that explores our American Mythologies, particularly masculinity and film. Smith investigates our fascinations with the body, gender, and entertainment in poems that are critically observant, darkly funny, darkly angry, and, sometimes, heartbreaking.
Whether he is cataloging shirtless men in films and bad television, lyricizing the anxieties of childhood, or redrawing the lines of cultural membership, Appetite attacks its subjects with wit, candor, and compassionate intensity. These poems announce their presence with a style that is as beautifully wrought as it is provocative.
In the America of Appetite, the usual hierarchies are obliterated: the disposable is as valuable as the traditional, pop culture is on the same level as the sacred, and the pleasurable simultaneity of past and present are found in high art and the tabloid. Smith’s work engages our contemporary moment and how we want to think of ourselves, while nodding to rich poetic, cultural, and personal histories.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Aaron Smith is the author of Appetite, and Blue on Blue Ground, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the chapbooks Men in Groups and What's Required. His work has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including Ploughshares and Prairie Schooner, and The Best American Poetry 2013. He is associate professor of creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
REVIEWS
"The poems are immediate, intimate, astonishing in their unabashed candor, their wicked and insightful humor. This is another way of saying I laughed as hard as I cried, that I looked up from the book believing Aaron himself must be standing in the doorway or sitting in the next room. He was that close. I felt I knew him already, the way the best post-confessional poets can leap, fully embodied, from the page into our lives."
—Julie Marie Wade, Lambda Literary
“’Appetite’ is a book that feels important. In his direct account of what it’s really like to confront our sexuality against the many unforgiving aspects of mainstream popular culture, Smith gives voice to a risky, forward-thinking intelligence, and a daring sense of humor. These poems stay conscious, secular, awake in the world. They make an argument for queer sensibility, and reach beyond austere notions of desire into truthful complication, exploring what it means to live among, and with, others. They challenge us; they mark us; they refuse to be safe.”
—Rain Taxi
“A bold and uncompromising confrontation with the body and its dangers, from the perspective of a gay male poet. In poems too urgent to take refuge in the decorousness that defuses many poems about desire, he writes with wit, smarts, and heart about the connections that all of us (queer or less queer) attempt to make using the precious and problematic vessels of our selves.” —Urban Range
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
1. Men in Groups
Men in Groups
Safe
Lucky
Fatal Attraction, 1987 (Movie Review and Trivia)
Fat Ass
Psalm (Queer)
Hurtful
Jesus Poem (Pierre et Gilles)
Fire Island, June 2008
Spring Rush
2. Celebrity Photo
Sometimes I Want a Gun
Film Short: Husband and Wife in a Grocery Store
He Only Reads Fiction
Celebrity Photo (Daniel Craig w/ Angelina Jolie)
The Problem with Straight People (What We Say Behind Your Back)
Boogie Nights, 1997 (Movie Review and Trivia)
After All These Years You Know They Were Wrong about the Sadness of Men Who Love Men
3. I Love the Part
I Love the Part
4. Prodigal
What It Feels Like to Be Aaron Smith
Diesel Clothing Ad (Naked Man with Messenger Bag)
Antibiotic (West Virginia, 2010)
Psalm (Boston)
What I Wanted (Age 8)
Casino Royale, 2006 (The Blue Speedo and Daniel Craig)
Christopher Street Pier (Evening)
Prodigal
5. Appetite
Appetite
Make Him Think You Could Pull a Gun
Notes on Contributors
What Christians Say During Sex
The Earth Spins Toward Oblivion While We Ride Trains
Anonymous
Psalm (West Virginia)
West Side Highway (Meditation)
Train (Hymn)
Notes
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012 eISBN: 978-0-8229-7845-9 Paper: 978-0-8229-6219-9
Appetite is a book that explores our American Mythologies, particularly masculinity and film. Smith investigates our fascinations with the body, gender, and entertainment in poems that are critically observant, darkly funny, darkly angry, and, sometimes, heartbreaking.
Whether he is cataloging shirtless men in films and bad television, lyricizing the anxieties of childhood, or redrawing the lines of cultural membership, Appetite attacks its subjects with wit, candor, and compassionate intensity. These poems announce their presence with a style that is as beautifully wrought as it is provocative.
In the America of Appetite, the usual hierarchies are obliterated: the disposable is as valuable as the traditional, pop culture is on the same level as the sacred, and the pleasurable simultaneity of past and present are found in high art and the tabloid. Smith’s work engages our contemporary moment and how we want to think of ourselves, while nodding to rich poetic, cultural, and personal histories.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Aaron Smith is the author of Appetite, and Blue on Blue Ground, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the chapbooks Men in Groups and What's Required. His work has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including Ploughshares and Prairie Schooner, and The Best American Poetry 2013. He is associate professor of creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
REVIEWS
"The poems are immediate, intimate, astonishing in their unabashed candor, their wicked and insightful humor. This is another way of saying I laughed as hard as I cried, that I looked up from the book believing Aaron himself must be standing in the doorway or sitting in the next room. He was that close. I felt I knew him already, the way the best post-confessional poets can leap, fully embodied, from the page into our lives."
—Julie Marie Wade, Lambda Literary
“’Appetite’ is a book that feels important. In his direct account of what it’s really like to confront our sexuality against the many unforgiving aspects of mainstream popular culture, Smith gives voice to a risky, forward-thinking intelligence, and a daring sense of humor. These poems stay conscious, secular, awake in the world. They make an argument for queer sensibility, and reach beyond austere notions of desire into truthful complication, exploring what it means to live among, and with, others. They challenge us; they mark us; they refuse to be safe.”
—Rain Taxi
“A bold and uncompromising confrontation with the body and its dangers, from the perspective of a gay male poet. In poems too urgent to take refuge in the decorousness that defuses many poems about desire, he writes with wit, smarts, and heart about the connections that all of us (queer or less queer) attempt to make using the precious and problematic vessels of our selves.” —Urban Range
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
1. Men in Groups
Men in Groups
Safe
Lucky
Fatal Attraction, 1987 (Movie Review and Trivia)
Fat Ass
Psalm (Queer)
Hurtful
Jesus Poem (Pierre et Gilles)
Fire Island, June 2008
Spring Rush
2. Celebrity Photo
Sometimes I Want a Gun
Film Short: Husband and Wife in a Grocery Store
He Only Reads Fiction
Celebrity Photo (Daniel Craig w/ Angelina Jolie)
The Problem with Straight People (What We Say Behind Your Back)
Boogie Nights, 1997 (Movie Review and Trivia)
After All These Years You Know They Were Wrong about the Sadness of Men Who Love Men
3. I Love the Part
I Love the Part
4. Prodigal
What It Feels Like to Be Aaron Smith
Diesel Clothing Ad (Naked Man with Messenger Bag)
Antibiotic (West Virginia, 2010)
Psalm (Boston)
What I Wanted (Age 8)
Casino Royale, 2006 (The Blue Speedo and Daniel Craig)
Christopher Street Pier (Evening)
Prodigal
5. Appetite
Appetite
Make Him Think You Could Pull a Gun
Notes on Contributors
What Christians Say During Sex
The Earth Spins Toward Oblivion While We Ride Trains
Anonymous
Psalm (West Virginia)
West Side Highway (Meditation)
Train (Hymn)
Notes
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE