Gog

“Gog is an exorcism of the past, of terrible betrayals, of women churned into the earth with their stillborn children, children torn from childhood like the victims of some hideous domestic war. Brandi George conjures up a world of monsters who live down the street, work in factories, go to church, pray to a God who cannot be paying attention to the havoc he has created. And yet George’s gorgeous language takes this hell and creates an aching beauty that shakes the reader. She screams, laments, exhorts, rants, weeps, prays, and in her words we see a woman who has risen from the flames of her past into a poetic paradise. Gog shimmers with a terrible beauty.”

-Barbara Hamby

A story-our story-in which ‘snakes spin the world in reverse,’ and ‘bug zappers outshine the stars,’ an era of prostitutes and johns crashing through second story floorboards, a time when souls find their most stable reality in the flurry of transmigration, this is the cosmos Brandi George navigates in Gog. At her service is a language lyrically rich, wild out of necessity, the sheer will to survive. There are so many astonishing moments in this collection, it’s hard to believe that this is a first book; Brandi George has emerged in this debut volume with a full-grown vision.”

-James Kimbrell