The Heads of New Lights Press & Justin Sirois
New Lights Press has just published a new book of poems from Justin Sirois! New Lights does gorgeous work, and is a small-press artistic center, as far as we can tell, for Colorado Springs. We've also heard through the poetryvine that Sirois just gave an astonishing reading from the book, high up on the rocks. More on this lovely event:
After just about two years of hard labor, we are so, so excited to announce that the new book of poems by long-time NewLights author Justin Sirois, The Heads of My Family, My Friends, My Colleagues, is out & available for purchase. Here is what some of our favorite writers have to say about The Heads:
Mike Young:
When you realize the new Old Spice ads might be working on you, when you're trying to split the difference between desk jobs and shoulder licks, when you're old enough for raunch to go holy but still young enough for GIFs to go infinite—that's when you know you're in the LoS of Justin Sirois's barking and bounding poems. The Heads are singing to the super ugly animals that pace the medians. They are twitching to put back some magic. They are winking that the word "okay" is the most useful word in the room, and they are hoping to be together with you because the only way a head gets a name is when another takes it in.
Dorothea Lasky:
The poems in The Heads by Justin Sirois make me feel so many things. They are not “temples,” but “squishy” things that “I love to put my face in.” I like it that way. These are poems that are part of life, constantly affirming and reaffirming it. A life that greets you with its magic. As when "What fits in the hand/ grows into armfuls." Or when you "sex this bathroom until the bathroom ain't for/ bathing no more." Everywhere is the “imagery” of life that “repeats in heaps of beauty." These are also poems that are part of the digital America we live in now and so they make that alternate existence beautiful. I hear echoes of Walt Whitman, Eileen Myles, and Blake Butler in these poems. I hear echoes of old folk songs. Most importantly, I hear the breathing of an indefatigable I in these lines. One that is living and listening. Let's follow it.
You should see CA Conrad's blurb too, what a finish. More on the book here.