Borrowing its title from an Ennio Morricone ditty in the spaghetti western Gunfight at Red Sands, Jennifer L. Knox's A Gringo Like Me contains poems at once raucous and sexy, tender and high. In favorites such as "Hot Ass Poem," "Cruising for Prostitutes,

A Gringo Like Me

Literature & Fiction

Knox, Jennifer L.

Poetry

Bloof Books

In The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, Jennifer L. Knox expands on her inimitable cast of characters, in hilariously poignant poems. In poems like "Marriage" and "One Ton of Dirt," Knox ventures further into autobiographical territory than she's ever gone before, in ways that will startle those familiar with her previous books, exploring relationships with her exes, her parents, and her younger self. Like the best comedians (to whom she's often compared), Knox is never merely funny. Each of her speakers, even the bedraggled coyote that walks into a Quizno's, has something important to say. Bob Hicock describes the effect of her trademark dark humor perfectly when he says, "The oddities of her work create a space in which it's possible to be oddly sincere. Knox is asking what really matters, in poems that move powerfully toward an answer." www.jenniferlknox.com.

The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway

It's hard to resist using a game show announcer's voice when discussing Jennifer Knox's latest collection, Days of Shame &amp; Failure. Knox knows how to draw human complexity out of absurdity and kitsch (and vice versa) without positioning herself above it. She is one of us, sharing our fear and wonder, and we feel this sense of community as if there were five million other viewers-a spin on Whitman's "multitudes"-watching along with us to see how she makes it out of each lyrically harrowing poem. Is that camp? Is it satire? Who cares! "Whatever it is," as one poem reports, it gives me "a real, really felt feeling," and that's what I'm a sucker for every time. -Gregory Pardlo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for DIGEST Jennifer L. Knox is one of our funniest writers, but what places her work in a realm of its own is the empathy that surrounds, contradicts, and occasionally undermines the joke, sending us far beyond the punch line. Written from the far edge of vast experience, these poems lyricize the post-beatdown quality of middle age. The marvelously capacious Days of Shame &amp; Failure is the work of a genius at her peak, the best book yet from one of our most brilliant and sui generis American writers. -Sarah Manguso, author of ONGOINGNESS Jennifer L. Knox is an iconic American poet whose work has been compared to Richard Pryor, Sarah Silverman, cartoonist R. Crumb, musician Randy Newman, and magician Doug Henning. None of these comparisons is quite right, however. Knox's work is unmistakably her own: surprisingly empathetic, utterly original, both funny and frightening, like America itself. And like the best comedians, she is never merely funny: each of her speakers has something important to say. Knox's poems have appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series and in the anthologies Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to Present and Best American Erotic Poems, as well as in such publications as the New York Times, the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and McSweeney's. Her first three books of poems are also available from Bloof Books: The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, Drunk by Noon, and A Gringo Like Me.

Days of Shame & Failure

The poems in Jennifer L. Knox's darkly imaginative collection,Crushing It, unearth epiphanies in an unbounded landscape of forms, voices and subjects--from history to true crime to epidemiology--while exploring our tenuous connections and disconnections. From Merle Haggard lifting his head from a pile of cocaine to absurdist romps through an apocalypse where mushrooms learn to sing, this versatile collection is brimming with dark humor and bright surprise. Alongside Knox's distinctive surrealism,Crushing It also reveals autobiography in poems about love, family, and adult ADHD, and Knox's empathetic depictions of the ego's need to assert its precious, singular "I" suggest that a self distinct from the hive, the herd, the flock, is an illusion. With clear-eyed spirit,Crushing It swallows all the world, and then some.

Crushing It

Copper Canyon Press

Borrowing its title from an Ennio Morricone ditty in the spaghetti western Gunfight at Red Sands, Jennifer L. Knox’s A Gringo Like Me contains poems at once raucous and sexy, tender and raw. Knox has collected dramatic monologues, personal lyrics, and even screenplays together in a single energetic volume for a genuinely surprising debut. In favorites such as Hot Ass Poem,” Cruising for Prostitutes,” and Chicken Bucket,” Knox’s quirky characters appear ornery, hickish, misogynist, or worse, but each elucidates a truth worth knowing, even if it’s not always welcome. In poems like "A Common American Name" and "Freckles," Knox’s lyrical voice charms readers. Between the poles of her unique range, Knox straddles and tames what she may yet prove to be an artificial divide in American poetry: she's a former slam champion, but also a two-time contributor to The Best American Poetry; she's a hilarious performer on stage, but also a deeply intellectual and formally disciplined poet.

A Gringo Like Me: Poems

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