What do you think?
Rate this book
PMS: A Journal In Verse
“[O]ne / writes a journal // to create the / guise of reading / creation. // It’s all already / not there!,” writes Dot Devota in her newest collection of explosive, visionary rage-songs sung in the private-public space of a journal toward the public-private space of “community.” PMS: A Journal in Verse is a radical rejection of artistic perfection and false relationship; a record of the mind’s neon blaze, flickering light upon such underworldly irritants as brost psychosis, compulsive self-reflection, failed artistic support structures, and literary theory. This is a formidable, darkly humorous collection fueled by the intelligence of an electric, revelatory state.
Praise for PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE:
"Dot Devota's PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE gives 'birth to myself' through rage, through resistance, through excruciating insistence on attention itself. Like a hand-held camera set to time-lapse over the course of a lifetime, Devota's 'terrestrial arcade' directs us to the difficult—perhaps impossible—experience of living through that which has not yet been contextualized. This collection is a vivid interrogation of language in the midst of a crisis with no center. Devota acts as oracle, our 'orphan of reality,' coming back from the trance to admit, 'There is no home / in time.' Both tender and furious, PMS dis/orients, allows death, and reconsiders the terms on which we might now live. "—Candice Wuehle
"Intimately peregrine and psychologically perennial, Dot Devota dotted our gaze with the broad brushstroke of her eloquent, casual cogitation. Her bold—brightly captivating poetry is an act of oppression against insomnia, suicide, abuser, victim blaming, writing, murder, rape, Alice Notley. Here her casual acute language finds the foreign country in the familiar. Each of her fluid, caged ache is a shard that impales the unveiled anguish of her very public contemplation, which is made private through the convex mirror of her interrogated resistance. PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE is a cat—always so ready to defenestrate itself out of limousine of convulsion—only to tenderly tiptoe its paws back into the languishing intellectual rickshaw of her compassion. It is a superoriginal collection, born to deny inequity of its aggressive beauty."—Vi Khi Nao
"A clear thing to say about Dot Devota's PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE is that it is incredible / incredible jewel incredible / jewel violence is not a choice / and sometimes is not an event / / / but a surrounding the force pressed against / the life of femme-ness / a stuckness / the writing the life thrives against / scars of water / waves? It comes toward you in incredible waves / like light you move through incredible jewel / fragmentation is often talked about as loss of self / time / space / but IT IS a sharpness a stickiness a burr / here a willingness to find a way / to hold it / to be present as / femme-ness / Dot in the desert which is the page is the desert / sometimes violence is an event no one will face / the book holds it / all out of care out of spite a force / 'I'm a poet / poets don't write books of poetry / this is a book' / incredible to have been there / to be there / with this book / incredible jewel."—Carrie Lorig
Praise for PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE:
"Dot Devota's PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE gives 'birth to myself' through rage, through resistance, through excruciating insistence on attention itself. Like a hand-held camera set to time-lapse over the course of a lifetime, Devota's 'terrestrial arcade' directs us to the difficult—perhaps impossible—experience of living through that which has not yet been contextualized. This collection is a vivid interrogation of language in the midst of a crisis with no center. Devota acts as oracle, our 'orphan of reality,' coming back from the trance to admit, 'There is no home / in time.' Both tender and furious, PMS dis/orients, allows death, and reconsiders the terms on which we might now live. "—Candice Wuehle
"Intimately peregrine and psychologically perennial, Dot Devota dotted our gaze with the broad brushstroke of her eloquent, casual cogitation. Her bold—brightly captivating poetry is an act of oppression against insomnia, suicide, abuser, victim blaming, writing, murder, rape, Alice Notley. Here her casual acute language finds the foreign country in the familiar. Each of her fluid, caged ache is a shard that impales the unveiled anguish of her very public contemplation, which is made private through the convex mirror of her interrogated resistance. PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE is a cat—always so ready to defenestrate itself out of limousine of convulsion—only to tenderly tiptoe its paws back into the languishing intellectual rickshaw of her compassion. It is a superoriginal collection, born to deny inequity of its aggressive beauty."—Vi Khi Nao
"A clear thing to say about Dot Devota's PMS: A JOURNAL IN VERSE is that it is incredible / incredible jewel incredible / jewel violence is not a choice / and sometimes is not an event / / / but a surrounding the force pressed against / the life of femme-ness / a stuckness / the writing the life thrives against / scars of water / waves? It comes toward you in incredible waves / like light you move through incredible jewel / fragmentation is often talked about as loss of self / time / space / but IT IS a sharpness a stickiness a burr / here a willingness to find a way / to hold it / to be present as / femme-ness / Dot in the desert which is the page is the desert / sometimes violence is an event no one will face / the book holds it / all out of care out of spite a force / 'I'm a poet / poets don't write books of poetry / this is a book' / incredible to have been there / to be there / with this book / incredible jewel."—Carrie Lorig
- GenresPoetry
166 pages, Paperback
Published October 26, 2021
8 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 10, 2022
There was this recent tweet from Wendy Trevino recently that asked people to name their favorite Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer book. And it was so exciting to read through the preferences, and it felt like a little star cluster of books. It was one my happiest moments on Twitter these past two weeks. And it's the feeling I get reading through Devota's PMS. Like the book gathers together a collection of other books I've admired, like all these books are a current of reading that's so pleasing, even as I don't think I'm supposed to be pleased reading Devota's book.
There's so much outrage and protest and bewilderment. Like how could these things have happened. And when reading the book, Devota really makes it feel like the things happened. And the poems take me through this mimetic lens of her personal psychology.
How the world constructs around someone, how they feel surrounded by boundaries, and within those boundaries the personal multiplies and multiplies on itself. And the kind of implicit question arises: is the personal, in fact, an internal realm defying boundaries. Especially when the poems keep multiplying out the effect on the her life. What is mathematics when related to the personal? The rules that would seem beyond question deserve questioning. If my life multiplies inside me, and that multiplication complicates the world around me, and the world around me is incapable of appropriate respones to the life inside me, causing further multiplications, it would seem to me mathematics is a failed venture, a failed logic, a failed analogy, but not on my part. I imagine the poet of PMS thinking that. Because I'm thinking it as I read the book.
The world relies too much on the infallibility of mathematics. And so the logic at the base of PMS, and the information I find self evident. Maybe too self-evident. For sure, grateful for the self-evidence that keeps unfolding in Devota’s book, because when I find a font of self-evidence exhibited in poems, I am like a horse wandering Tuscon, AZ. Where I imagine so much desert. And a horse needing fonts with self-evidence available at them.
There's so much outrage and protest and bewilderment. Like how could these things have happened. And when reading the book, Devota really makes it feel like the things happened. And the poems take me through this mimetic lens of her personal psychology.
How the world constructs around someone, how they feel surrounded by boundaries, and within those boundaries the personal multiplies and multiplies on itself. And the kind of implicit question arises: is the personal, in fact, an internal realm defying boundaries. Especially when the poems keep multiplying out the effect on the her life. What is mathematics when related to the personal? The rules that would seem beyond question deserve questioning. If my life multiplies inside me, and that multiplication complicates the world around me, and the world around me is incapable of appropriate respones to the life inside me, causing further multiplications, it would seem to me mathematics is a failed venture, a failed logic, a failed analogy, but not on my part. I imagine the poet of PMS thinking that. Because I'm thinking it as I read the book.
The world relies too much on the infallibility of mathematics. And so the logic at the base of PMS, and the information I find self evident. Maybe too self-evident. For sure, grateful for the self-evidence that keeps unfolding in Devota’s book, because when I find a font of self-evidence exhibited in poems, I am like a horse wandering Tuscon, AZ. Where I imagine so much desert. And a horse needing fonts with self-evidence available at them.
January 29, 2025
Difficult poems that have to be nibbled, re-read, the not-so-accidental "typos" that change and conflate meaning.
My favorite parts were the ones that felt like ephemera - a series of emails from a dead poet - words left on the page like artifacts, you have to puzzle out on your own.
My favorite parts were the ones that felt like ephemera - a series of emails from a dead poet - words left on the page like artifacts, you have to puzzle out on your own.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews