Hallelujah Blackout
Starred Review. You/ should have seen the sweat of still-being-alive, writes Lemon in his sprawling, varied, and ambitious second collection. Thoughts of joy and pain, eros and death, not to mention references from Van Gogh to half-scratched lotto tickets collide in these unclassifiable, rapid-fire poems. Lemon (Mosquito)constantly asks the reader to take his complex ecstasies in one swallow, diction and image madly comingled: Alleluia, asshole, amen./ Together: let us eat. Elsewhere, a car wreck/ In my hands, is followed by a plea to Come with me tonight, my chocolate-/smelling love At times the fever pitch of these poems is diminished through repetition, but the book's two long poems—Abracadaver and the title piece—provide a counterpoint to Lemon's freewheeling antics: a softer, more stripped-down voice amid the rush in the matchbook of our heads.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.