Apocalyptic Swing: Poems

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

“She is a daring act as a poet/athlete . . . but she can also travel the backwoods, pointing out herons, ivy vines and creek water with a kind of divining rod rightness. . . . Her wild lyrics shudder and shine, jubilant and threatening, exuberant.”—Carol Muske-Dukes, Huffington Post

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Gay

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2009

About the author

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart and Apocalyptic Swing. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers, the Bernard F. Conners Prize from the Paris Review, and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. She is Editor at Large for Los Angeles Review of Books and Assistant Professor and Walker Percy Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews

[Maria Nazos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very impressed at the artful way in which Calvocoressi captures Americana. She accomplishes this feat by employing various personas, from concerned mothers to vertically-challenged champion boxers. The end result is a landscape that is stripped of irony, yet not without melancholy; beautiful yet not overly-romanticized; fraught with sentiment yet without a hint of sentimentality. She conveys images of hate crimes, from Matthew Shephard, the young gay man who was the victim of a ruthless hate-crime, to a lesbian female speaker's account of being assaulted with a soda bottle. Calvocoressi manages to inhabit all of these hostile environments unflinchingly, but without a hint of bitterness.

[John Pappas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal, noir-ish poetry about the oppression of or infringement of one body upon another, or one body politic upon another. Boxing, bombings, and small-town blues permeate this collection from Gabrielle Calvocoressi author of the award-winning collection The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart. Captivatingly dark, and disturbingly sexual, without the incisive depth of the poem-cycles of her earlier work, but still solid, like a punch from a middle-weight, Calvocoressi delivers muscular lines like “You don’t like to see a man get knocked out / cold? Then you’ve never lived in Hartford / or any town of boarded windows” and “All you gotta do is get up / one more time than the other guy thinks you can” with gravity, panache and just a little bit of hope.

[Lezlee Hays · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I read poetry instead of books because they pack an immediate punch. This is one of my favorite poets.

[Jamie Barkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poetry collection captures a nostalgic, yet brutish side of the All-American classics. Many poems are set in the Midwest, or centralized by a particularly "American" city. Calvocoressi tells the story of so many through these powerfully fluid poems. "Acknowledgement, 1964" is my personal favorite. I had the privilege of hearing her read from this collection, and she explained it was a piece for her father. To this day I can hear her reading aloud the lines of "Where's that girl you married? You don't know...you could've passed me by and saved yourself the whole mess. My mother doesn't know you yet. She's on her back in the grass with some other man's son." This piece, littered with very "American" images as you'll note through the whole collection, really speaks to the universality of our experiences, yet individualizes the story in a way that is stunning. Calvocoressi's ability to create intimacy when discussing the nondescript and normative really comes through here.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think “Pantoum Evangel: Billy Sunday” is one of the best pantoums I have ever read. So surprising, and truly crafted so that the form adds meaning. I really love the syntax of the poems in this collection. We get a lot of deconstruction of the sentence. I also really love the use of form in the book--we go seamlessly between list poems and sonnets--all highlighting the most delicate images.

Some of my favorite moments:

“Body” doesn’t do
your body justice.

“It will feel better than any floor
that's risen up to meet you.”

“Love, you’ll stick your finger into
anything.”

“I could
have made a joyful noise instead.”

[Jason Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is immediate, visceral poetry. Kind of like a poetry companion to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska or a Drive-By Truckers album. Calvocoressi uses typically American hang-ups ( sports, Christianity, sexuality, violence) to create poignant, elliptical poems of the lives of small town America.

My favorites are "Pantoum Evangel: Billy Sunday" which juxtaposes sexuality and evangelism, and "Training Camp: Deer Lake, PA". The latter is a paean to middle America, travelogue, and a moving description of a boxer's life.

[H]

". . . there's a sound
you make when you hit and you hit and you're
nothing but motion. It's not like sounds
you make with your wife or a girl, it's rougher

and darker and sometimes it feels better
and after you feel so relaxed.

. . . . . . . . .

. . . And I'd let the guy do it, let him
get to where he'd want me to hold him
up for a bit."

-Blues for Ruby Goldstein

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. If you're looking for a poetry volume to celebrate National Poetry Month, go for this. Calvocoressi's often brief lines punch you. She addresses suicide, racial violence, sex, psychological injury but in the subtlest of ways and alongside pure joy at the moments of heroism in everyday life.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous nostalgic queer Americana poems. Boxing, churches, pickup trucks, girls, stickball, pills, cookouts, prayer. A touch of Richard Siken, a touch of Larkin, but utterly distinctive. I love this.

[Kaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars? Can I do that? I'll have a review of this up at The Fanzine sometime soon (http://www.thefanzine.com/).

[Broadsided Press -]

A poem by Gabrielle Calvocoressi from this book was Broadsided August 1, 2010. Check it out at http://www.broadsidedpress.org

[Yiqiu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love that I first met this book via tumblr, where I saw some lines and immediately fell in love with the style and images (‘Dance until your bones clatter/ what a prize you are’). Afterwards I checked this book and knowing it’s award-winning I put it on the to-read shelf. Thanks to Book Depository I finally got myself a copy. Looking back I am just amazed by the fact that I like it for its text not for that it’s on certain lists.

I like how the poet looks at many social issues. The stories of the boxers are such a good angle to examine body and (will) power. also the way the poet uses the forms of religious prose is refreshing for me.

The last poem with its sadness and resilience brought me to tears.

Highly recommended!

[Catherine Pikula · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard calvocoressi read as a freshmen in college. I was obsessed with "love supreme" and especially the "billy sunday" pantoum which wrecked me and still does.

There's something so distinctly masculine about this book and not masculine because there's poems about boxing-- but rather the kind of masculinity that only a lesbian can hold and project. Its the kind of toughening one does to oneself in order to survive as a queer person.

The poems here will always be special to me bc they made me feel a kinship before I knew exactly what that kinship was.

There is the kind of music here that drew me to poetry in the first place.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Because I was so impressed with her first book, "The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart", this was one of the most unexpectedly disappointing reads I've experienced in decades. I found little of interest in this volume. Neither "dark" not "violent" bother me in poetry, and there's plenty of both in this volume, but the work simply did not resonate with me.

If, however, you are a fan of boxing, "Apocalyptic Swing" may hold for you a stronger attraction than it did for me.

[Frances Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic persona poems and the most kick-ass pantoum I've ever read.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calvocoressi knows how to get under my skin just right, this collection might be her best.

[Mrs.Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting combination of topics. My favorite is “Twentieth Century in the Form of a Litany”.

[Gideonleek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting stuff

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems themselves were good, but as how the collection is organized and worked as a whole, I felt was a bit lacking or I didn't fully understand how the sections were broken. The speaker sometimes seemed like a female wanting to be male, sometimes the voice was a male boxer, and changes from poem to poem, so I found the voice a bit difficult to follow. Also the first poem brings up the mother as not understanding the "you," and the "you" seems almost to be addressing the self/poet. I expected the manuscript to be largely to be about that. But then it isn't followed up with. There was one poem in the middle which mentioned the mother but it wasn't enough. I wanted more. I do like h/er poems though.

[Rangi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calvocoressi's work is rooted firmly in America. These thirty precise poems remind us of the body’s holiness & its necessity. They speak of love: sometimes desperate, sometimes bloody – always hard-won & worth its cost.

Apocalyptic Swing is a mesmerizing & necessary respite from the four walls of our lives. Reading it will inspire you to do everything you do (sing, love, breathe etc.), better.

[Aundrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

The theme of small town life hits home in kind of the wrong way for me, but if I were to reread it in a year or two I think I could appreciate it better. I enjoyed many of the poems anyway. I don't anything about boxing so I had to look up a lot of the references.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathtaking, jawdropping, tearjerking poetry from a contemporary master.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yup.

[Christina M Rau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Small town America. True grit boxer. Intricate diction and perfected rhythms, this collection is very successful in creating a tone of hope and a motif of struggle.

[Colin Moon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A swirl of sex, violence, music, and faith; this is one I'm going to read and reread.

[Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

All my queer Southern Catholic feelings hammered into brutal, brassy poetry.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of a collection. I still kick myself for having missed her reading last fall.

[Mills College Library]

811.6 C169a 2009