I'll Give You Sex Up Front: A New Review of Speech Acts

Laura McCullough's Speech ActsWe’re thrilled with the review of Laura McCullough’s Speech Acts that has appeared in The Line Break. As usual, we’ll give you our favorite tid bits…

Black Lawrence Press has released another fine collection of poems. This time it’s Laura McCullough’s Speech Acts – an exploration into the language and experience of poetry. Yes, language. And McCullough deliberately makes poems about language. Oh, but they are fun, and they aren’t some intellectual bullying of the reader or some masturbatory ego-stroking of the poet’s cleverness. No. These are fun and enjoyable while maintaining integrity…

…It’s as if the first section announces to the reader: “Pay attention to language in this book. I’ll give you sex up front, but come the second section I’m gonna give you more.  I’m going to give you poems in the second section that are strong on their own, and if you read the first section, they will gain new depths. I’m telling you something more is going on down below. Dear reader, you will go down on these poems like you are going down to perform fellatio on the poem, and the poems may be ‘more than the mouth can handle’, and in a good way.”

…and then a link to the full review