Paramour

Stacy Doris

Stacy Doris writes that her extraordinary book is very conservative. Who's she kidding? And why? Is it because her themes are love and poetic form and its heroes her husband and the palindrome? Doris's treatment of her themes and forms is radically different from poem to poem and most contemporary practice. Maybe her cornucopia's conservative because her themes, references and characters were inspired by Euro-American literature and other culture, ancient and modern, "high" and "low"--Ovid and St. John of the Cross; D.H. Lawrence and Harper's Bazaar; Mozart, Joyce, and Michael Jackson. Such conservatism yields the most radical works. As if that mattered.

--Jackson Mac Low

A box of prosodic bonbons with exploding centers, offering the burst of intensity only artificial flavors can provide. Shimmering with assonances and anagrams, Stacy Doris's latest technical marvel comes stacked with Warnings to Daughters, battle scenes, a Pull-Out Bonus for girls and truly excellent gore--yielding remarkable new insights into our culture's fascination with the perpetual interplays between aggression and love. Paramour works like the best of highly-engineered lipsticks: compact, sexy, and always a little scary, it encourages kissing but won't kiss off. I'm completetly besotted!

--Sianne Ngai

This is a handbook with a ravenous audacity instructing and warning doubly how to halve a narcissus. Her extra-convial form hinges to receive what is tender: Ms. Doris' is the authentically cosmetic craft. Nothing else is new thus.

--Lisa Robertson