Dinner Poems

by Amanda Montei, Jon Rutzmoser

// For five months these poets, meeting at their dinner table, have paused to jot down ruminations, and pondering more deeply have withdrawn to their bedroom to limn their dueling/mutual misunderstandings of the eternal questions of love, coexistence, and bodily presence, while never forgetting to eat dinner, their favorite meal.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2013

About the author

Amanda Montei holds a PhD in English literature from SUNY at Buffalo and an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts. She is the author of Touched Out (Beacon Press), Two Memoirs (Jaded Ibis), and the chapbook The Failure Age (Bloof Books). She has written essays and criticism for Slate, Mother Tongue, Vox, HuffPost, Electric Literature, Believer, Rumpus, Ms. Magazine, American Book Review, and others. She lives in California.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collaboration opens up what the everyday means to two people in love and what every poem can be when opened up to the other. We need this. // is the / full disclosure / blurb I wrote for this book that I love even more after seeing Mike Flatt simmering w/Mike Flatt-level orneriness when paired up to read one of the poems w/a guy totally hamming up at the Just Buffalo reading.

[Emily Kiernan · Rating 5 out of 5]

At turns playful, tender, and formally adventurous, Dinner Poems is a surprisingly emotionally affecting portrait of young artists struggling, working, loving, and wading through the daily precariousness of being alive.