ERNESTA, IN THE STYLE OF THE FLAMENCO
poems
“McIntosh's imagination is so vivid that the primary response to [his poetry] is delight.” —AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW "In Ernesta, when McIntosh's title character declares: 'Music has pictures,' it instantly brings to mind this poet's astounding use of language that creates visual landscapes of great clarity. I've been an enthusiastic fan of previous books and recommend you get your hands on as many as you can. This may be the biased sentiment of a devoted fan, but Sandy: You rock!" —PHOEBE SNOW "Ernesta, in the Style of the Flamenco, Sandy McIntosh’s latest volume, bursts with brilliance and sizzles with sass. McIntosh’s new poems are audacious, ravishing, syntactic marvels, clowning-around oddballs. The energy and wit in this book will make you want to whip out your fan, put on your non-skid sole shoes, and dance.” —DENISE DUHAMEL [On "237 More Reasons To Have Sex"] "I like the poem’s inventiveness, its brio and its spirit of play, all of which depend to some extent on its extravagant length. Taking off from the absurd pedantic epigraph, the poem rolls on, generating itself from line to line and seeming as inexhaustible as its subject. I also like the way the poem moves, shifting nimbly as it embraces a grab bag of material including little film scenarios (invented and borrowed), miniature scripts for porn films and sex fantasies, word play, jokes, double entendres, tiny domestic scenes, and much much more. As also fits the subject, the poem is having a very good time."—PATRICIA CARLIN, THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY blog |
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| Sample Shorter Poems |
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| Ernesta does what she has to do... |
In Ernesta, Sandy McIntosh’s exuberant imagination breathes fresh excitement into narrative poetry. The title poem, spotlighting a 19th century Spanish pianist who does whatever it takes (such as eliminating the competition) to survive, discloses fascinating social dimensions of music and its impact: “Music will watch us drown.” “Among the Disappointments of Love” are shorter poems that show how dubious ideals of love get punctured, unbridled egos cause romantic relationships to crash, friendship is subject to a disorienting mirror, a victim of the male gaze becomes the gazer, and science colonizes the hapless body. “Nathan, in the Ancient Language” features a narrative about an affluent dunderhead who comically fails at every endeavor yet cannot shake the comfortable fate ordained for him by his family’s privilege. Replete with echoes of Anglo-Saxon music and phrasing and some actual quotations from the old tongue, the poem raises issues about the ownership of language, charismatic charlatanism and its undoing, and the (in)ability to read other people and the material consequences of reading poorly. Further, the poem implicitly asks: How should individuals utilize the power that sometimes randomly comes their way? |
Cover art by Rachel Burgess |
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