13th Balloon

by Mark Bibbins

In his fourth collection, 13th Balloon, Mark Bibbins turns his candid eye to the American AIDS crisis. With quiet consideration and dark wit, Bibbins addresses the majority of his poems to Mark Crast, his friend and lover who died from AIDS at the early age of 25. Every broken line and startling linguistic turn grapples with the genre of elegy: what does it mean to experience personal loss, Bibbins seems to ask, amidst a greater societal tragedy? The answer is blurred—amongst unforeseen disease, intolerance, and the intimate consequences of mismanaged power. Perhaps the most unanswerable question arrives when Bibbins writes, "For me elegy/ is like a Ouija planchette/ something I can barely touch/ as I try to make it/ say what I want it to say." And while we are still searching for the words that might begin an answer, Bibbins helps us understand that there is endless value in continuing—through both joy and grief—to wonder.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Memoir, Gay, Biography Memoir

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 11, 2020

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of this poet's previous collections, They Don't Kill You Because They're Hungry, They Kill You Because They're Full, was one of my top reads of 2015. I liked it for the snark powers of observation.

This collection is much more personal and with all respect to whoever wrote the publisher blurb, this is not about the gay rights movement or AIDs. It is about his lover and friend who died, and who he continues to grieve. They are also his own background as a gay youth and a gay man. The context is broader, sure, but all the poems come from a deep place of personal pain and experience.

The day I read this collection, a friend in Instagram had posted a picture of a finished embroidery project that just said "Ugh." I saw it immediately after reading the poem that ends like this (and feels perfect for right now):

"...We lived on a planet of disaster
We lived in a country of misery
We lived in a sate of horror
We lived in a city of scandal
We lived in a house of daily dying
from which to distract ourselves
we sometimes embroidered
the filthiest jokes we could think up
on every available towel pillowcase sheet
I shouldn't say it saved us
but in many ways it did...."

[Hussein Baher · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

Easily one of the best poem books I've ever read.
HIGHLY recommend.

a collection of elegies navigating grief and anger(with a hint of bitter humor) mainly towards a past lover faced with death by AIDS.

[Basia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made my heart drop many times, but also picked it back up and coaxed it to go on, refueled by glimpses of humor and wonder that often populate the plane of grief. Still, Bibbins is careful to never gloss over or disguise the unsightliness of the injustice that created many of this poem's circumstances, resulting in an essential, elegy-transcending work.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been a long time since I’ve read poetry from someone I don’t know. I read my friend David’s poems. And occasionally I read my own poetry written a long time ago.
Mark Bibbins’ 13th Balloon touched me very deeply, as he reflects on the death of a loved one, his ex, his partner who died 25 years ago. Beautiful imagery and remembrance. I particularly loved when he admitted that he couldn’t remember some thing or that his memory was faint. I worry about that all the time with myself. Somehow it made his poetry even more realistic. A beautiful poem.

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new poem by Mark Bibbins, "13th Balloon," follows his reflections on the loss of his partner to AIDS more than 25 years in the past. Disjointed and fluid, each stanza is an attempt by Bibbins to piece together what he lost when his partner died, and, as a result, each line feels a bit like sand falling through your fingers at the beach as you feel him trying to reconnect with the presence he lost to the past. Parts discussion on loss and commentary on the AIDS crisis, the poem doesn't shy away from the personal or the political.

Longform and connected, each page shines a quick flash of light onto what it means to lose someone physically but carry them with you into your own future, and it reveals the responsibility we bear for remembering, as clearly as we can (and as impossible the task) those we lost. Pick up a copy of the book when it releases in February. You won't regret it.

[BookChampions · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does this book only have 10 reviews? Sooooooo gorgeous and human and raw.

*13th Balloon* is a book-length elegy to Mark Bibbins' partner, also named Mark, who died from AIDS. I started reading these poems (poem fragments) again a couple days ago and 30 pages later I had tears in my eyes all over. There is something so tender--the soft center of heartbreak--in these lines and it will make you cherish every relationship you've got. There is so much here to learn about memory and love. HIGHLY recommend.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so grateful for this poet, and for this book's careful examination of the struggles both personal and of a generation.

Some of my favorite line:

the last of the birds engorges itself on so much of your death that finally it bursts like a boil in the sky

I set foot in a jungle once so I know how things on Earth can work

When I cut into the past what leaks out is you

We were in a room of gorgeous noise

[Erica Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

An early contender for my favorite poetry collection of 2020. So moving, insightful, and honest. Also, it's the kind of book I feel comfortable recommending to any reader. The language is accessible while the poems themselves are anything but simple.

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mulling especially over "Borges could have written / the story of this story / in which a writer dies and his books / are bought by strangers / and taken away then decades later / after the last stranger dies / word again goes out / in the ways in which it will / and all the books come back together / all the books come back"

&

"...terrible jaws of sunlight opening / to swallow a song I could never / hold for long but wanted you nevertheless / and always to see"

&

the entirety of the Star Trek page

&

the entirety of "Imagine a bird..."

But this whole thing is gorgeous. Downed it in two hours and will dive back in again.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.

Even the people who give out poetry awards
think poetry is gay.

[anna leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

highlighted this all over the place holy shit ouch ow ouch wow awesome

[Luke Gorham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have like 2 or 3 emotions per year. This one elicited the last 2 I had left before 2021 kicked in.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book length poem about the death of a lover to AIDS, near as I can gather, 25 years ago, this was moving for strange ways.... I think a lot of it was, perversely, the way Bibbin and I are almost the same age and from nearly the same part of the country, and just walking in his high school memories of what people said about folks who were gay at that time.... It's definitely not a time I'd like to go back to, but it also moved me.

The poems themselves are good (they have dividers, so though they are one long poem, it's easy enough, too, to identify particular poems here), though maybe a little samey, so that most are medium-length lines, broken into irregular stanzas. They get to a place, 2/3 of the way through, where some of the lines are broken by hemi-stitch, though it doesn't change the work much. Bibbins doesn't do a lot with line breaks, etc, though he eschews punctuation, at least here.

What makes the poems work is the emotional detail and the storytelling-- there are lots of short episodes here, of caring for his lover as he died, or else spending the night after the funeral with his lover's other lover. Lots of small moments like that.

The book didn't blow me away, but it was solid, approachable stuff. The poems about Limbo and babies, that was haunting and will stick with me. The rest of this, maybe not more than as a sticky feeling.

[caramels · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When I was a teenager I smugly told
one of my teachers I wasn’t worried
about going to hell
because all my friends
would be there too and she just
as smugly responded
Yes but you won’t recognize them

Now when I ride the escalator
to hell I have to kiss
everyone on it
even the drug lobbyists
but we’re all fine now
very wealthy down here

Drop a kiss on the floor of hell
the three-second rule applies

I may not care who
I’m kissing anymore
but neither do they

Hell is full of delicious flowers
and we keep scooping out
deeper hells for their decapitated stems

How cold could I have been to have said
that this is the way Celan ends
Celan ends Celan ends
not with a bang
but a river
Woolf too I mean
wind any creature tight enough
pull any creature loose enough
it does what it has to do

Still the flowers I can hear them

are singing Don’t leave
you haven’t finished
eating us yet”

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one writes something autobiographical, there is the risk of losing the reader. It’s easy for the writer to get lost in the minutiae of life and lose sight of the whole of living; put another way, we all have favorite trees in our forests.

Poetry is unforgiving in this regard. Words, images, and emotions are concentrated without the advantage of distillation and dilution that comes from prose. Bibbins uses poetry to tell his story in a way that is personal, painful, and beautiful.

The fear that accompanied the arrival of AIDS cannot be fully understood by those who didn’t come of age before the dawn of AZT and other retrovirals. It can though be conveyed by those who were there, who survived, and who continue to mourn the casualties of that time. Bibbins has done that with 13th Balloon.

Highly Recommended

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book-length poem about the AIDS crisis and losing his friend and partner, Mark, to it.

Some favorite lines:

"They could not have known / that our war because everyone / lands in one / would be with a virus or that one / of the hands that failed to close / quickly or tightly enough around / it would stop it from killing you / would also be the state"

"Since you died the house style could best / be described as leaves that cling / to trees too long into winter / I understand how / to miss a hint / as I regularly watch the anger / harbored against queer people inflate / like innumerable soap bubbles / in what passes for real time"

"I wanted a cast on my leg or anywhere / I wanted braces and glasses / and my tonsils out / I wanted scars / I don't know when / of whether I figured out the difference / between wanted to be damaged / and wanting to be healed"

[Ellice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book-length poem pays tribute to a former lover of the author who died of AIDS at the age of 25. Looking back decades later, the result is part memories of the deceased’s life and end-of-life, part about how Bibbins coped with the loss, and part about life in general as a gay man during the 1980s and 1990s, when so many people he knew succumbed to this terrible new, devastating disease. There’s a lot here that will resonate with those who have suffered the loss of a partner at any age and for any reason.

[Victoria Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“deathstruck”

“I’ve never felt I’ve known/ a story well enough to make/such practical use of it”

“in your bed with your body/ that overnight had decided/ it was no longer you”

“There are days when everything/ feels like a metaphor/ for your having died”

“There are days/ when nothing does”

“How strange the bits that landed/ on my tongue didn’t taste/ of anything that could ever have burned”

“after the last stranger died/ word again goes out / in the ways in which it will/ and all the book come back together/ all the books come back”

[Sara Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first collection of poetry that I've read (and to be honest I initially bought it without actually realizing it was poetry!) and it was absolutely beautiful! Instead of saying it's about the "American AIDS Crisis" as the description says, I would say that this is more about his lover and friend, working through the grief of losing a loved one, with AIDS as a theme throughout. In reading this, I could feel the author's pain from the loss of a loved one.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some really interesting moments in this collection—a lot of really beautiful writing about grief. But there was something about the tone I didn't enjoy, those moments when it felt like the writer was just talking out loud to himself while writing. Some parts of this book also veer toward that abstract image style of poetry that doesn't do much for me.

3/5

[Catherine Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this was longer. I got to the end and wasn't ready for it to be the end just yet.

Consistency in voice, tone, and mood. Many clever, emotive verses, and, in particular, I highlighted this one:
There's a song we know that tells us
beauty's where we find it
but tonight I'm sure there's even more
where we left it

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, easily, some of the best poetry I’ve read. This is the first Mark Bibbins book I’ve picked up, and this stuff really gets inside of you.

The queer poetry put out this year - Bibbins, Natalize Diaz, Danez Smith - just wow.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good! I’d give it 6 stars if I could! Looking for more of this author’s work as soon as I finish writing this. A beautiful collection about love and grief. It’s heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. I just love the author’s voice.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lovely, almost prose poem, reflecting on love and loss in the time of AIDS. It weaves in the mundane everyday moments of memory and experience to heighten the depth of sorrow and ultimately arrive at the exquisiteness of life (with inevitable, if ill-timed death).

[Brian Wittenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful poem sequence that is a perfect elegy for the lost soul of a generation and a love that will endure through the words of the poet. A heartbreaking and -warming journey through the poet's life and thoughts and love.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

With such an aching pain this poem floats on humor and anger and confusion and love. I was carried away. And in the end, a sudden burst.

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know I needed a sad, moving collection of poems about death by AIDS to quell my soul but this it did. Beautifully composed, deliberate yet not maudlin.

[Katie Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

So happy to end 2020 with this magical book-length poem, a gift for all readers.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was beautifully haunting in its tackling of grief and pain, and how it carries on with him even while memories fade.

[Jessika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly tender and, while full of grief, there's always a glimmer of humor and determination.