Now You're the Enemy: Poems (University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series)
"From the 'unspeakable cliffs' that govern the landscape of damage (both physical and psychological) and of a belief in a life past that-a belief in rescue-James Allen Hall has looked into those spaces 'where love is / only love if it makes you bleed.' And from what he has found there, he has crafted these riveting poems, by turns searing and forgiving, iconoclastic and-unexpectedly, as if in spite of themselves-sacred. Now You're the Enemy is a stirring, triumphant debut."--Carl Phillips, author of Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006"James Hall is possessed by the family romance, in particular the figure of a difficult mother who looms on his imaginative stage. 'I was,' he writes, 'mothered into art.' And then some: Hall's poems are psychically charged, nervy, both measured and fevered, compassionate and outrageous, and alive to the very core."--Mark Doty, author of Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems"Now You're the Enemy is a brilliant exploration of the structure of feeling. This debut collection, in an astonishing sleight of hand, inflates representation in order to deflate the inner screen that provides both the darkness and the monsters."--Claudia Rankine, editor of American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics