Ekstasis

by Kevin Killian, Peter Valente (Photographer)

This collaboration between two poets who also work in the visual arts, is a near perfect work of concision. Peter Valente turns the camera into poetry and Kevin Killian entices the poem to work with visual mastery. —Neeli Cherkovski is currently finishing his new book of poems, Elegy for the Beat Generation While Valente’s photographs appear coolly intimate, the deeper revelation is individual memory. What, exactly, have we been invited to witness? Is a face and body in the blue light sufficient? Or do we crave more? More tension, more ambivalence in the decision to what and how much? Ekstasis is a ménage à trois that rivals anything one could experience on Google+. —Vanessa Norton is the cofounder and editor of Wasted Books. Kevin Killian and Peter Valente’s haunting collaboration Ekstasis comes on like one of those dark dreams you can’t seem to shake – it’s memory and sensations still lingering long after you’ve awoken. —Michael Salerno, artist, filmmaker, and publisher.

102 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2017

About the author

Kevin Killian was an American poet, author, and playwright of primarily LGBT literature. He is also a highly regarded editor. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009. His novel, Impossible Princess, won the 2010 Lambda Literary Award as the best gay erotic fiction work of 2009. Killian is also co-founder of the Poets Theater, an influential poetry, stage, and performance group based in San Francisco.

He is married to Dodie Bellamy.