World Famous Comics: Mosquito: Poems (A Tin House New Voice)
Mosquito: Poems (A Tin House New Voice)
By: Alex Lemon Publisher: Tin House Books Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Tin House Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 70 Publication Date: July 19, 2006
In the tradition of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Notebooks and works by Lucia Perillo, Linda Gregg, and Jane Kenyon, Mosquito uses a literary format as a way to deal with serious illness and recovery. Lemon underwent brain surgery as a young man, and Mosquito turns that life-changing event into a vibrantly imagistic, poetic autobiography. The book is arranged in four parts. The first part tracks the emotional journey of the speaker during a grave illness, meditating unsentimentally on the grim details of hospitalization and surgery. Part two expands into the speaker’s erotic life, plunging into sexuality as a realm that resonates with both life and death. The last two parts explore the speaker’s world, historical and familial, as he is transformed by his trials. Lemon’s magnum opus is an anguished, observant, and resilient meditation as much zen as it is explosive, as clinical as it is philosophical and lyrical.
"Mosquito" Alex Lemon's first book of poetry, "Mosquito," presents a raw and vivid read. Lemon's particular word choices and intense syntax drive each of his poems into the reader, making them uniquely attuned to each of their five senses. The experience of Lemon's surgery, a common theme throughout the poems in the book, seems to have fueled him into a poetic fury. He describes his hospital experiences with heated verbs and sharp images. Leading the first section, "MRI" describes "I'm half-/ naked, shivery with chicken skin,/ napkin-gowned." In "Other Good," he writes, "Anesthesia dumb, scalpel-paste/ Rawing my tongue, I found/ Myself starfished in sky." Other poems in this collection highlight his experiences with lovers, family, and companions. In "Plum," Lemon writes, by the time the fake had finished you were half-undressed, trembling, hypnotizing me with your bones, the sound of rain on the sofa. Your lips moved, and I stopped you, put a finger in the air like I had an idea that could save the world or a secret I swore to tell but instead, unmoving, I sat like a jackass, finger in the air, and you, beautifully naked and absolute, smiling away my incompetence, shaking your head and biting a plum, juice streaking to your chin, dripping like steam condescending on the shower mirror.
Each of Lemon's poems, whether discussing tumors or lovers, displays such raw intensity and emotion that it becomes impossible to stop reading. My only qualm with "Mosquito" was its lack of clarity throughout the poems. Often Lemon's imagery would be so intricate that the poems would become confusing rather than illuminated. Such was the case in "Who Finds You," where Lemon depicts, "While the sink overflows/ With voice - will you follow/ Into the dark but what is/ That way the body suffers/ Your eyes you are all wishless/ And bewildered mouths of black/ Berry fists pumping ribs they say/ Come running with a star/ Bright needle there is/ Bound to be damage". His imagery evokes feeling, but the images have become too complicated to truly understand, and in some cases, even visualize. Although Lemon's complex images occasionally mystified me, his stylistic language and heated verbs kept me interested in the book. I forgave him when his poems lost me, mainly because he still managed to induce feeling from me despite the lack of clarity. His ability to brutally evoke all five senses remains one of his greatest gifts as a poet, and must be continued in further collections of poetry to come.
One of the great new voices in American Poetry Lemon's first published collection is one of the best debuts of any contemporary poet I've read. His experiences, most notably going through brain surgery, are told in a meticulously lyrical language; he does an incredible job translating a harrowing experience into something neither trite nor overly-aesthetic; a masterful showing of what cunning word-choice, meter, an honest, bare introspection can achieve. Nothing short of brilliant.
probing restless through the guts Alex Lemon's poems come from the youthful "school" of linguistic daring, probling often painfully (but always bravely) for truth. He reaches down so deeply into himself, his world, that he brings up what most poets couldn't dare to unearth. We all--poets, readers of poetry, life-livers--need accumulated layers peeled as often as possible from our eyes, but we don't usually know where to go for the operation. Lemon has the scalpel and wields it deftly. He leads us to fresh reflections on his world and ours. Between the covers of "Mosquito" we live at times on the edge of a precipice, then plunge to underwater depths. It's all renewing, invigorating, death-defying, and stimulating. No reader can remain unmoved.
Mosquito four years ago alex lemon said "i believe life is saturated with grief but at times its the most beautiful thing possible."
life. and this book. both more beautiful than i could imagine.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
