Kyle McCord's You Are Indeed an Elk, but This Is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze consists of thirty single-stanza wonders of the world-ferociously associative, disjunctively digressive, and melodiously surprising wherever they roam. Their acro-battery blasts of talky power are rich with joy and pathos, not to mention also an abiding, and sometimes biting, ambivalence toward both the meadow of contemporary American culture and "the unspeakable acts of kindness/ we committed together." This is a wonderfully tricked-out barrage of a book, the "wild life" in "wildlife," and especially for you.-Matt Hart, author of Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless I love the roaming and attentive eye through which we are invited to experience Kyle McCord's new book, You Are Indeed an Elk, but This Is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze . Here are poems at once mystic, intimate, hilarious, and completely enamored with the impossible world--"the smoothest crest / of skyline smirked by a river / without a single thing to lose / itself inside" is just one way this book amazingly imagines living and loving with others. I too, feel that some days "decorum may be all I have." Thank God this book reminds me that I'm wrong. -Wendy Xu, author of You Are Not Dead In this, Kyle McCord's fourth collection, someone is always doing something ill-advised. There's both trespassing (going where you shouldn't) and trespassing (doing what you shouldn't, or "sinning"-- a word that has its etymological roots in archery: sinning as "missing the mark." In other words, the "sinner" has tried to do right and failed). I've come to admire characters/ speakers/ real actual people who live bravely enough to sin in that kind of way. And McCord's speaker is heroic as he journeys, slaughters, and devotes himself to potentially dangerous love affairs. I find this book's title unusually helpful: "Sure, you're a an elk, but you're not supposed to be doing that otherwise acceptable elk-thing here!" which, of course, my brain translates to "Sure, you're a human, and you're trying to be good at that by doing things you know humans do, but don't do it that way!" So. What I'm saying is that this book is wondering how to live rightly. I wonder that all the time, so I'm glad someone as thoughtful and inventive as Kyle McCord is wondering with me. -Hannah Gamble, author of Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast

You Are Indeed An Elk, But This is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze

Literature & Fiction

McCord, Kyle

History & Criticism

Gold Wake Press Collective

Poetry. "In Kyle McCord's new book Gabriel empathizes, the Devil sympathizes, and an exhausted God watches a televangelist. Moving, imaginative and full of surprising turns, McCord's poems are alive with both the world and the dead who 'have no word for intimate, and a thousand words for blind.' I love the abundance of these poems, their humor, the music that made my ears howl and purr. When I dream about McCord's poems dreaming of me, I ride an aging mechanical bull, werewolves take over the city, Abraham Lincoln begs to rip off my blouse, God's love vanishes into my body like bread. I wake up hungry, afraid, laughing."—Traci Brimhall "In Kyle McCord's mercurial and visionary new book, SYMPATHY FROM THE DEVIL, we see a bold refiguring of the moral imagination that, like a Dante without a Beatrice, wanders hell bereft of the traditional compass that would clarify the archetypes. Here the eye opens wide its compassion in the dark. Play transgresses and so, in opposition to the self-servitude of sublimity and rapture, sheds light on cruelties and exclusions suffered in the name of the ideal. Everywhere we look in this book, we find the generosity and precision of paradox. The pleasure of absurdity may distance heartbreak, but it likewise binds us to it, such that the poet's lightness of touch and ranginess of sensibility becomes indistinguishable from his vision, the sense that one half of sympathy is always the embrace, the other the letting go. A stunning collection."—Bruce Bond "'What do you want from any of us, reader?' asks the first poem in Kyle McCord's SYMPATHY FROM THE DEVIL, bristling a bit, cocking its chin, letting us know that what follows will never be exactly what we expect. The book brims with wily intelligence and unsettling humor that challenge and surprise and thrill and move us so that in the end what we want is everything this terrific book has to give."—Corey Marks

Sympathy from the Devil

Poetry

Gold Wake Press

In these wide-ranging and beautiful poems, Kyle McCord considers the intersections of art, politics, and lived experience. His poems are distinguished by an imagination that is at once startling and deeply humane.

Magpies in the Valley of Oleanders

Trio House Press

This gripping drama follows Tom Duncan, the sole survivor of the largest cult mass suicide in U.S. history, as he works to rebuild his shattered life. After a Netflix documentary accuses Tom of masterminding the plot that led to the deaths of one hundred thirty-seven people, including his wife, he finds himself exiled from his home and family. Tom seeks redemption through a weekend memorial with other cult members who escaped before the grisly end.\nIn Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult by Kyle McCord, we see how well-meaning people seeking spiritual community can become ensnared in webs of intrigue and deadly manipulation. Through the lens of a Netflix documentary as well as Tom's personal struggle, this book takes readers on a journey through the dark heart of a simple Iowa commune gone horribly wrong.

Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult

Atmosphere Press

Poetry. "In Kyle McCord's new book Gabriel empathizes, the Devil sympathizes, and an exhausted God watches a televangelist. Moving, imaginative and full of surprising turns, McCord's poems are alive with both the world and the dead who 'have no word for intimate, and a thousand words for blind.' I love the abundance of these poems, their humor, the music that made my ears howl and purr. When I dream about McCord's poems dreaming of me, I ride an aging mechanical bull, werewolves take over the city, Abraham Lincoln begs to rip off my blouse, God's love vanishes into my body like bread. I wake up hungry, afraid, laughing."-Traci Brimhall "In Kyle McCord's mercurial and visionary new book, SYMPATHY FROM THE DEVIL, we see a bold refiguring of the moral imagination that, like a Dante without a Beatrice, wanders hell bereft of the traditional compass that would clarify the archetypes. Here the eye opens wide its compassion in the dark. Play transgresses and so, in opposition to the self-servitude of sublimity and rapture, sheds light on cruelties and exclusions suffered in the name of the ideal. Everywhere we look in this book, we find the generosity and precision of paradox. The pleasure of absurdity may distance heartbreak, but it likewise binds us to it, such that the poet's lightness of touch and ranginess of sensibility becomes indistinguishable from his vision, the sense that one half of sympathy is always the embrace, the other the letting go. A stunning collection."-Bruce Bond "'What do you want from any of us, reader?' asks the first poem in Kyle McCord's SYMPATHY FROM THE DEVIL, bristling a bit, cocking its chin, letting us know that what follows will never be exactly what we expect. The book brims with wily intelligence and unsettling humor that challenge and surprise and thrill and move us so that in the end what we want is everything this terrific book has to give."-Corey Marks&#65279;

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See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCord, Kyle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McCord, Kyle

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCord, Kyle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

You Are Indeed An Elk, But This is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze

Sympathy from the Devil

Magpies in the Valley of Oleanders

Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult

Sympathy from the Devil

X-Rays and Other Landscapes