Deal: New and Selected Poems

by Randall Mann

Political and sequined, New and Selected Poems contains the most memorable of Mann’s previous five collections and presents new poems of disco, lament, and formal invention.
One of our leading American practitioners of poetic form and liberating constraint, Randall Mann has for the past thirty years confronted what it means to identify as multiracial and queer in urban America. New and Selected Poems harnesses five previous volumes and includes economical yet expansive new works rooted in an age of Wi-Fi, apps, and chat notifications. His newest poems, written in concise, contemporary lines, move us word by word, until we arrive at a stark reality. Unafraid of the nexus between politics, syntax, and the contradictions of the colloquial, Mann’s poetry refuses “token liberation” and reminds us that “life’s a cold exercise in looking back”—back to disco and fetish, to a shared gay history, to his childhood Florida or his beloved San Francisco. Whether writing a sestina in the voice of the mortician of Harvey Milk’s murderer, or a deeply moving pantoum elegizing bullied gay adolescents who committed suicide, formal invention for Mann remains intensely personal. This collection—erotic, mournful, and often satirical—characteristically subverts, even as it enlarges, a language that continues to fail us.
Timestamped by surprise and exhaustion, and filled with the everyday indignities of being alive, New and Selected Poems affirms Randall Mann, in the words of Garth Greenwell, as “among our finest, most skillful poets of love and ruin.”

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

144 pages, Paperback

Published May 9, 2023

About the author

Randall Mann's DEAL: NEW & SELECTED POEMS is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in May 2023. He is also the author of the following books: A BETTER LIFE (Persea Books, 2021); PROPRIETARY (Persea Books, 2017), finalist for the Northern California Book Award and Lambda Literary Award; STRAIGHT RAZOR (Persea Books, 2013), a Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; BREAKFAST WITH THOM GUNN (Chicago, 2009), finalist for the California Book Award and Lambda Literary Award; and COMPLAINT IN THE GARDEN (Zoo/Orchises, 2004), winner of the 2003 Kenyon Review Prize. In addition, he has written a book of criticism, THE ILLUSION OF INTIMACY: ON POETRY (Diode Editions, 2019). Winner of the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry magazine. Poems and prose in The Adroit Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Lit Hub, The Cortland Review, and The Kenyon Review.

Reviews

[Sam Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful and evocative collection of poetry. My favourites were from "Breakfast with Thom Gunn," which is also the poem I discovered Mann through, so that is cool! I don't think anyone can subvert a Palindrome poem or play with punctuation as he does (check out "Beginning and Ending with a Line by Michelle Boisseau" to see what I mean!).
My new favourite poems discovered from this collection are:
- Pantoum
- Queen Christina
- Ovid in San Francisco
- The Fall of 1992
- Leo & Lance
- The Mortician in San Francisco

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots to enjoy in this collection. Centered in SF, much of the time in the 90s and 00s, it switches between a rites of passage to a full mature commentary - the collection is taken from numerous texts published by the author. Still, an easy read, with some punches that hit the mark.