pleasureis amiracle

by Bianca Rae Messinger

A book of poems written out of a depressive episode, in which a devotional approach to music and desire reestablishes communication between the poet’s body and the world.

In pleasureis amiracle, the poems invoke the lyric and refuse it, moving between time and sound—words re-connect and re-cohere, resisting separation and challenging readers to feel their way to meaning. Perception becomes a many-limbed entanglement from which the reader is never let go. Music is both divine and accessible, a sublimation of everyday movements into an erotics of sensation. 

An experiment in form as much as content, it asks what can be cured by music, what is trans about desire, and how can one allow the body to feel what the mind sees, or vice versa.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

Published January 14, 2025

Reviews

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zPD2...

[francesca]

interesting use of formatting and language but not my cup of tea

[atito · Rating 4 out of 5]

it might be slightly simple of me but the conjoining of words does feel like a verbal approximation of pleasure, which feels apropos given the collection's investment in what felt like the shape of thought. i love that, the visual use of words to sensory ends within the purview of syntax, what it might feel like in the body to think sentences. it feels breezy, like movement. "this eventual evening. it feels like a you from elsewhere (not inside)." the last section with the holy spirit i found particularly gorgeous

[Elena Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

interesting use of language and form

[sara]

reading this felt like hearing a constant stream of static noise in your ear that never goes away