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Safe Danger
In Safe Danger, here comes a Stephen Zerance poem sashaying down the street: snakeskin tights, clean-shaven legs, black tee—why it could be Satan himself. It’s a far cry from the baggy khakis and extra large shirt Zerance’s father would have him wear, clothes sure to make him feel like a real man. No dice. Instead, Zerance has demons under his bed and phobias—mosquitos, bees, roaches, spiders, ticks—a veritable house of horrors, his pain and longing all the more powerful for their formal restraint. These are elegant poems, knife thin, taut and edgy.
—BARBRA GOLDBERG
The post-apocalypse is happening now and in Baltimore in the steamy, exciting poems of Stephen Zerance’s Safe Danger, in which the mythic is mashed against the everyday to produce a strange and intoxicating juice fermented with pieces of his own body and accented with notes of lyric intensity.
—DAVID BERGMAN
Stephen Zerance’s Safe Danger is an anxious book, a book about desire and dread, worry and wonder, about how it’s possible to fear what feeds us. These marvelously brutal poems speak the body always on the verge of its own undoing, the body that is “all meat, learning how to suffer.” A skillful debut: artfully written, painfully naked, and radically disruptive.
—AARON SMITH
Stephen Zerance’s poems have appeared in West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Assaracus, and Knockout, among other journals. He has also been featured on the websites of Lambda Literary and Split This Rock. Zerance received his MFA from American University, where he received the Myra Sklarew award. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with an extensive shoe collection. Find him on Twitter @stephnz, or on Instagram @stephenzerance and @lvcifers_revenge.
—BARBRA GOLDBERG
The post-apocalypse is happening now and in Baltimore in the steamy, exciting poems of Stephen Zerance’s Safe Danger, in which the mythic is mashed against the everyday to produce a strange and intoxicating juice fermented with pieces of his own body and accented with notes of lyric intensity.
—DAVID BERGMAN
Stephen Zerance’s Safe Danger is an anxious book, a book about desire and dread, worry and wonder, about how it’s possible to fear what feeds us. These marvelously brutal poems speak the body always on the verge of its own undoing, the body that is “all meat, learning how to suffer.” A skillful debut: artfully written, painfully naked, and radically disruptive.
—AARON SMITH
Stephen Zerance’s poems have appeared in West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Assaracus, and Knockout, among other journals. He has also been featured on the websites of Lambda Literary and Split This Rock. Zerance received his MFA from American University, where he received the Myra Sklarew award. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with an extensive shoe collection. Find him on Twitter @stephnz, or on Instagram @stephenzerance and @lvcifers_revenge.
90 pages, Paperback
Published August 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 10, 2018
Fantastic collection by an amazing poet. Bravo, Stephen Zerance!
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February 17, 2019Read for CLMP Firecracker Awards - so no public comments or rating!
February 21, 2019
An excellent little collection of queer poetry recommended to me by a friend. I won't presume to say I understand it all, but there were several poems that I thought had such a lovely and poignant turn of phrase. There was a section dedicated to Jon Benet that was interesting, but I can't say that I got it. I look forward to returning to it and trying to understand more.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews