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Teeth Never Sleep: Poems
Finalist, 2019 PEN Open Book Award Winner, 2019 American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation
Drawing on folklore and fantasy, childhood memory and hallucination, and marked by a tone of piercing divulgence, Teeth Never Sleep nimbly negotiates the split consciousness a culture of dominance requires of men (especially men of color), highlighting the fissures in selfhood created by the pressure to seek submission over intimacy while still wanting desperately to be loved, and tracing the contorted route by which emotional pain finds expression in violence. “The night my girlfriend tells my mother I beat her, / I feel betrayed. This was a secret we kept between us. / That night, I was no longer my mother’s loving son,” the speaker in one poem confesses, and later “I never wanted to be this kind of animal.”
And yet, through the lens of Ángel García’s sharp imagining, men frequently appear as beasts (sometimes literally)—as hybrid beings both tender and brutal—that he steadfastly refuses to let off the hook as he obsessively catalogs the origins of toxic masculinity ( the first time I made my mother cry , the first time I pitied my father , the first time I saw a girl bleed ) and its quiet, lasting “Still a part of me believes a / man shouldn’t cry in front of a woman, even in the dark.”
In a culture of weaponized masculinity, the poems in Teeth Never Sleep make a doorway of a wound, inviting readers to walk through and sit down inside the raw pain they harbor to meditate on two central, urgent what it means to be a man and how, as a man, to love.
Drawing on folklore and fantasy, childhood memory and hallucination, and marked by a tone of piercing divulgence, Teeth Never Sleep nimbly negotiates the split consciousness a culture of dominance requires of men (especially men of color), highlighting the fissures in selfhood created by the pressure to seek submission over intimacy while still wanting desperately to be loved, and tracing the contorted route by which emotional pain finds expression in violence. “The night my girlfriend tells my mother I beat her, / I feel betrayed. This was a secret we kept between us. / That night, I was no longer my mother’s loving son,” the speaker in one poem confesses, and later “I never wanted to be this kind of animal.”
And yet, through the lens of Ángel García’s sharp imagining, men frequently appear as beasts (sometimes literally)—as hybrid beings both tender and brutal—that he steadfastly refuses to let off the hook as he obsessively catalogs the origins of toxic masculinity ( the first time I made my mother cry , the first time I pitied my father , the first time I saw a girl bleed ) and its quiet, lasting “Still a part of me believes a / man shouldn’t cry in front of a woman, even in the dark.”
In a culture of weaponized masculinity, the poems in Teeth Never Sleep make a doorway of a wound, inviting readers to walk through and sit down inside the raw pain they harbor to meditate on two central, urgent what it means to be a man and how, as a man, to love.
70 pages, Paperback
First published October 19, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 21, 2021
This is a tough and powerful book--the subject matter is really tough, but it is really gripping. I read it in one sitting, and would recommend others to follow suit if possible. BUT this collection (and review) centers largely around domestic violence, so be aware of that beforehand.
Domestic violence is a theme that appears repeatedly throughout Teeth Never Sleep, and we often follow the speaker through (within one poem) the cycle of anger, violence, apology, and forgiveness. It is hard to read some of these lines, and we read how he distances himself emotionally from the women he abuses ("I watched her, from the rearview mirror, grow smaller and smaller"--"Chingarla"; "The woman driving screams she loves me--something I know but can't bear to hear"--"Freeway Exits") and fruitlessly tries to make amends without really changing ("I go back to the bedroom and crawl in beside her, my lover, still sleeping in the dark. I tell her, I've cleaned the house so you can sleep in. My hands still stained in the blush of her cheek"--Ablutions"; "I try to piece memory together, make sense of what's blacked out. Again, I fail. Then that feeling. It's hard for me to breath. I say her name softly, as if learning it for the first time. When we make love, because we always make love, I apologize for everything I don't remember doing, everything I never remember saying. Hating, always, the moment when I'll turn on the light"--"Giving It").
The figure of the father, and the hole he leaves by being absent, is ever-present. From his father, the speaker learns that violence and intimacy, bitter and sweet, always go together:
... As always, you
have no answers. Only a vague memory of your
father swinging a machete through the wild stalks
to place on your tongue the first sweet thing you
tasted. (Antipode II)
The first person to leave me
was my father. He took with him
my memories: hollow-boned
animals perched on his beard.
Flightless, in his back pocket,
the butterfly knife he gave me. (Meditations on Leaving)
"This is the only way I want to be touched: his fists pummeling my / face" (Hunger).
The poem cycle "Elegy for what Once Slept in a Cage" is a powerful recounting of an incident of animal violence in a California zoo. It also tells us how the brother-brother relationship comes to replace, in whatever way is possible, what the speaker didn't have with his father. "Conversations with my Father" also reveals that the poetic speaker may not be a reliable narrator--did the father abandon the son, or did the son abandon the father?
García slides easily between verse poetry and prose poetry, and demonstrates that he can both weave incredible metaphors and correctly place line breaks.
This is a powerful collection, but not one to be taken lightly.
Domestic violence is a theme that appears repeatedly throughout Teeth Never Sleep, and we often follow the speaker through (within one poem) the cycle of anger, violence, apology, and forgiveness. It is hard to read some of these lines, and we read how he distances himself emotionally from the women he abuses ("I watched her, from the rearview mirror, grow smaller and smaller"--"Chingarla"; "The woman driving screams she loves me--something I know but can't bear to hear"--"Freeway Exits") and fruitlessly tries to make amends without really changing ("I go back to the bedroom and crawl in beside her, my lover, still sleeping in the dark. I tell her, I've cleaned the house so you can sleep in. My hands still stained in the blush of her cheek"--Ablutions"; "I try to piece memory together, make sense of what's blacked out. Again, I fail. Then that feeling. It's hard for me to breath. I say her name softly, as if learning it for the first time. When we make love, because we always make love, I apologize for everything I don't remember doing, everything I never remember saying. Hating, always, the moment when I'll turn on the light"--"Giving It").
The figure of the father, and the hole he leaves by being absent, is ever-present. From his father, the speaker learns that violence and intimacy, bitter and sweet, always go together:
... As always, you
have no answers. Only a vague memory of your
father swinging a machete through the wild stalks
to place on your tongue the first sweet thing you
tasted. (Antipode II)
The first person to leave me
was my father. He took with him
my memories: hollow-boned
animals perched on his beard.
Flightless, in his back pocket,
the butterfly knife he gave me. (Meditations on Leaving)
"This is the only way I want to be touched: his fists pummeling my / face" (Hunger).
The poem cycle "Elegy for what Once Slept in a Cage" is a powerful recounting of an incident of animal violence in a California zoo. It also tells us how the brother-brother relationship comes to replace, in whatever way is possible, what the speaker didn't have with his father. "Conversations with my Father" also reveals that the poetic speaker may not be a reliable narrator--did the father abandon the son, or did the son abandon the father?
García slides easily between verse poetry and prose poetry, and demonstrates that he can both weave incredible metaphors and correctly place line breaks.
This is a powerful collection, but not one to be taken lightly.
July 7, 2022
some poems in this were really good but a lot of them I either
a) hated the writing
b) did not understand
c) make me uncomfortable in a bad way (e.g a guy getting a boner after these 2 girls had a punch up, a poem about piss)
a) hated the writing
b) did not understand
c) make me uncomfortable in a bad way (e.g a guy getting a boner after these 2 girls had a punch up, a poem about piss)
February 2, 2019
Best poetry book so far 9/10 dentists would recommend. Beautiful imagery and storytelling and all together just a beautiful piece of work. There is quite a bit of Spanish though so if you dont speak the language like me then I suggest Google Translate because you dont want to skip a single poem in this collection.
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August 30, 2019811.6 G2161t 2018
May 24, 2019
These poems are cuttingly lyrical. García incises a toxic legacy of inherited masculinity, both cultural and familial, and in the process he reveals the tender wound underneath. This is a risky collection, both thrilling and daring. I highly recommend it.
September 14, 2019
the cover blurb calls this poetry "nose-breaking" which: Accurate.
These poems are, by turns, furious and infuriating, despairing, plaintive and ferocious. I mean:
After years of not speaking to one another, he's brought me here to show me what he's built with his bare hands at nearly sixty-five years old.... I try to understand everything my father has endured to make this, try to know how he's pained himself to erect another story above a house no one, in years, has set foot in, but I can't.
-=-
If not worried, restless. If not restless, hungry. If not hungry, striving only to please you in strange ways. Say play dead, it licks from your palm--it's tongue a wet pumice stone--to know what you taste like. Admit you are capable of loving what kills, easily.
-=-
The night my girlfriend tells my mother I beat her, / I feel betrayed. This was a secret we kept between us. / That night, I was no longer my mother's loving son.
-=-
I mean, damn.
These poems are, by turns, furious and infuriating, despairing, plaintive and ferocious. I mean:
After years of not speaking to one another, he's brought me here to show me what he's built with his bare hands at nearly sixty-five years old.... I try to understand everything my father has endured to make this, try to know how he's pained himself to erect another story above a house no one, in years, has set foot in, but I can't.
-=-
If not worried, restless. If not restless, hungry. If not hungry, striving only to please you in strange ways. Say play dead, it licks from your palm--it's tongue a wet pumice stone--to know what you taste like. Admit you are capable of loving what kills, easily.
-=-
The night my girlfriend tells my mother I beat her, / I feel betrayed. This was a secret we kept between us. / That night, I was no longer my mother's loving son.
-=-
I mean, damn.
January 3, 2019
The CantoMundo poetry prize winner! Teeth Never Sleep embodies the terrifying and brutal language of masculinity. The speaker narrates unflinchingly, maintaining a brutal honesty, further self-indicting his flaws and tracing for us his lineage of toxic men and masculinity. Garcia's imagery of beasts is delightful and so smart in this collection. I'll return to this book often. A necessary one in Latinx and American literatures.
December 6, 2023
This was a really beautiful book. Definitely difficult to read given the DV subject matter. We read this in one of my undergrad poetry classes and the author came to do a reading / speak about the book, which made me appreciate it more. I love poetry but find very few poetry books that I thoroughly enjoy because I need to feel something while reading the poems. I definitely felt something while reading this.
June 2, 2020
Visceral and powerful. Unflinchingly faced flaws and sorrow.
August 4, 2020
CWs: domestic abuse (by narrator), graphic description of animal death
February 9, 2021
As wonderful as the discussions of masculinity and control are, it's incredibly graphic and grotesque. I understand why this was done, but it was just to much for me
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July 11, 2021
Trigger & Content Warnings
Domestic abuse
Graphic animal death
Domestic abuse
Graphic animal death
October 8, 2019
“This is the poem I’ve always wanted to write about a dog, a puppy really” begins “A Dog Poem,” the first prose poem in Ángel García’s, Teeth Never Sleep. In loose syntax we glimpse happiness: dog and boy playing together at the beach. As they head home, the syntax tightens. We were foolish to relax. The dog is flattened by a van, its “innards pushed through its mouth.” The speaker reveals the poem’s new purpose: “getting home and telling no one.” Tenderness, happiness, boyhood—these are crushed over and again in García’s debut. In their place come darkness, silence, and hunger: breeding grounds for the toxic masculinity that this book confronts.
The title poem marries song and silence, swallowing and hunger. “Teeth Never Sleep,” is a garish lullaby, suggests that teeth grinding against teeth “sing,” “a music made crudely from bones.” But notes do not emerge; instead: “What spills from your lips into your palm / —blood puddled—are all the words you’ve / swallowed: a constant quiet, dying of hunger.” There is music here in the consonance of “spill” and “lips,” the assonance of “blood / puddled/ swallowed.” But the ultimate product is voiceless, hungry.
Relationships are sites of starvation. In “Broke,” an anti-aubade, the lover returns to bed with his beloved at dawn. ...
complete review here: https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/teeth...
The title poem marries song and silence, swallowing and hunger. “Teeth Never Sleep,” is a garish lullaby, suggests that teeth grinding against teeth “sing,” “a music made crudely from bones.” But notes do not emerge; instead: “What spills from your lips into your palm / —blood puddled—are all the words you’ve / swallowed: a constant quiet, dying of hunger.” There is music here in the consonance of “spill” and “lips,” the assonance of “blood / puddled/ swallowed.” But the ultimate product is voiceless, hungry.
Relationships are sites of starvation. In “Broke,” an anti-aubade, the lover returns to bed with his beloved at dawn. ...
complete review here: https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/teeth...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews