AMANDA PARADISE

Former United States Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith wrote in the New York Times, "CAConrad's poems invite the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and the mysterious." The poems in AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration reach out from a (Soma)tic poetry ritual where CA flooded their body with the field recordings of recently extinct animals. Foundational here are the memories of loved ones who died of AIDS, the daily struggle of existing through the Corona Virus pandemic, and the effort to arrive at a new way of falling in love with the world as it is, not as it was.

Table of Contents:
TABLE OF CONTENTS GOLDEN IN THE MORNING CRANE OUR NECKS ON ALL FOURS I AM A SEAT FOR THE WIND ACCLIMATING TO DISCOMFORT OF THE SYSTEM BREAKING BENEATH US 900 CHOCOLATE HEARTS A MINUTE AT THE CANDY FACTORY AUGURIES CAST ASIDE ONLY IN STACKING BOOKS CAN THE TREE FEEL ITS WEIGHT AGAIN DEATH WILL SET YOUR DAY RIGHT BATHE THE DOOR WITH BLOOD OF THE CENTAUR FOR THE FERAL SPLENDOR THAT REMAINS ALTERED AFTER TOO MANY YEARS UNDER THE MASK EMBEDDED SIGNAL TO SHAKE THE DAY NO ONE HOLDING IT SHUT YOU CANNOT RETURN A STRETCHED MIND GLITTER IN MY WOUNDS WE VANISH INTO ONE ANOTHER AS NEEDED IMPALED BY SHARP POINTS OF WONDERMENT DIVING INTO THE PREMONITION THE ASKING PRICE ENCIRCLING THIS DAY WITH CENTIPEDE COORDINATION CAMISADO ON THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMERICA’S ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT WHILE THE WARS RAGE ON MEMORIES OF WHY I STOPPED BEING A MAN 45 MINUTES TO RESCUE THE PHOTO ALBUM BEFORE THE GARBAGE TRUCK ARRIVES MURDER IS AGAINST A RULE SOMEWHERE THAT IS NOT AMERICA !! ! VISIT A LIVING BEING TO EAT WHAT FALLS FROM THEIR BODY 72 CORONA TRANSMUTATIONS The (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual: Resurrect Extinct Vibration ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

About the Author :
CAConrad has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. They are the author of AMANDA PARADISE, forthcoming from Wave Books in 2021. Their book While Standing in Line for Death won a Lambda Literary Award. They also received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Please view their books, essays, recordings, and upcoming events at bit.ly/88CAConrad.

Review :
CAConrad always argues (from the inside of their poems) for a poetry of radical inclusivity while keeping a very queer shoulder to the wheel. Their kind of queerness strikes me as nonpolarizing, not intentionally but because of the fullness of their exposition, a kind of gigantism that seems to me to be most deeply informed by love, and a tenderness for the ravages and tumult of existence. —Eileen Myles At a time when I don’t always know how to make sense of what’s going on, CAConrad serves as a cleareyed seer. —Jillian Steinhauer, New York Times