Wine-soaked poetry

Poet Chad Sweeney pulls a Don Quixote with The Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney de las Minas de Cobre. Sweeney (Chad? Juan?) created an alter-ego who then "created" The Lost Notebooks:

The story goes that poet Chad Sweeney wrote a book in Spanish, assigned it to a character Juan Sweeney de las Minas de Cobre, gave Juan a backstory, and then translated Juan’s poems into English.

Got that? Either way, Elizabeth Hildreth of Bookslut insists that readers take a dip in the refreshing "Sweeney sea:"

....Juan lives in the moment. He looks at the stuff we want to look at, daydreams about the things we like to daydream about.

#7

The world so new, mercury
hung from leaves. Everywhere
swords were stuck
in malachite and boys practiced
to be king.

If that's not convincing enough, Chad/Juan and the pages of Lost Notebooks are vino-filled and just might make you tipsy:

For all of its fun and punch, The Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney de las Minas de Cobre is serious. It’s seriously fantastico. It has lines you will carry around with you the rest of your life, even if you live to be older than you ever wanted to be. It feels so small when you hold it in your hand, but it feels so big when you hold it in your head. It’s honest and humble and funny and has giant presence. It’s hard to have all that in one book, which is why most books don’t, but this isn’t most books. Go ahead and lick the pages, Cabernet.