Reviews
"Gimnez Smith generously deploys physical--often violent--imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism." -- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection." -- The Nation , "Rabble-rouse, translator, good witch, Carmen Giménez Smith is an alchemist of disparate ingredients mixing the canonical and folkloric as well as high art and pop culture in poems that reference the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Wizard of Oz, Ana Mendietta and Joan Rivers. 'I want my problems to be Wallace Stevens but they're Anne Sexton,' Giménez Smith writes. But her poems defy easy comparisons with their verbal dexterity, intellectual savvy, and fleshy insistence. In a stunning collection that combines fairy tale, autobiography, ars poetica , and manifesto, Giménez Smith asks women artists to question not only the fables told about us, but the ones we tell ourselves." --Susan Briante, author of Utopia Minus, "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ("Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.") The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Giménez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts."-Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation, "Giménez Smith generously deploys physical-often violent-imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism."- Publishers Weekly "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."-Julia Sophia Paegle, author of Torch Song Tango Choir, "Allusive, metaphorical, and nimble in tone and register, Milk and Filth is aesthetically alive."- Rain Taxi Review of Books "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ("Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.") The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Giménez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts."-Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation, "Allusive, metaphorical, and nimble in tone and register, Milk and Filth is aesthetically alive." -- Rain Taxi Review of Books "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ('Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.') The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Gimnez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts." --Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation, "Carmen Giménez-Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"-Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."-Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir, "Gimnez Smith is full of words--luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."-- The Raven Chronicles "Carmen Gimnez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!" --Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity." --Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir, "Gimnez Smith generously deploys physical--often violent--imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism."-- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection."-- The Nation "Allusive, metaphorical, and nimble in tone and register, Milk and Filth is aesthetically alive."-- Rain Taxi Review of Books "Gimnez Smith is full of words--luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."-- The Raven Chronicles "Carmen Gimnez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"--Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."--Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ('Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.') The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Gimnez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts."--Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation "Rabble-rouse, translator, good witch, Carmen Gimnez Smith is an alchemist of disparate ingredients mixing the canonical and folkloric as well as high art and pop culture in poems that reference the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Wizard of Oz, Ana Mendietta and Joan Rivers. 'I want my problems to be Wallace Stevens but they're Anne Sexton,' Gimnez Smith writes. But her poems defy easy comparisons with their verbal dexterity, intellectual savvy, and fleshy insistence. In a stunning collection that combines fairy tale, autobiography, arspoetica , and manifesto, Gimnez Smith asks women artists to question not only the fables told about us, but the ones we tell ourselves."--Susan Briante, author of Utopia Minus, "Giménez Smith generously deploys physical--often violent--imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism." -- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection." -- The Nation , "Gimnez Smith is full of words--luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."-- The Raven Chronicles "Carmen Gimnez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!" --Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity." --Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir, "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."-Julia Sophia Paegle, author of Torch Song Tango Choir, "Giménez Smith generously deploys physical-often violent-imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism."- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection."- The Nation , "Giménez Smith generously deploys physical--often violent--imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism."-- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection."-- The Nation "Allusive, metaphorical, and nimble in tone and register, Milk and Filth is aesthetically alive."-- Rain Taxi Review of Books "Giménez Smith is full of words--luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."-- The Raven Chronicles "Carmen Giménez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"--Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."--Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ('Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.') The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Giménez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts."--Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation "Rabble-rouse, translator, good witch, Carmen Giménez Smith is an alchemist of disparate ingredients mixing the canonical and folkloric as well as high art and pop culture in poems that reference the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Wizard of Oz, Ana Mendietta and Joan Rivers. 'I want my problems to be Wallace Stevens but they're Anne Sexton,' Giménez Smith writes. But her poems defy easy comparisons with their verbal dexterity, intellectual savvy, and fleshy insistence. In a stunning collection that combines fairy tale, autobiography, arspoetica , and manifesto, Giménez Smith asks women artists to question not only the fables told about us, but the ones we tell ourselves."--Susan Briante, author of Utopia Minus, "Allusive, metaphorical, and nimble in tone and register, Milk and Filth is aesthetically alive." -- Rain Taxi Review of Books "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ('Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.') The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Gimnez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts." --Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation, "Giménez Smith is full of words--luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."-- The Raven Chronicles "Carmen Giménez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!" --Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity." --Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir, "Giménez Smith generously deploys physical-often violent-imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism."- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection."- The Nation, "Rabble-rouse, translator, good witch, Carmen Giménez Smith is an alchemist of disparate ingredients mixing the canonical and folkloric as well as high art and pop culture in poems that reference the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Wizard of Oz, Ana Mendietta and Joan Rivers. "I want my problems to be Wallace Stevens but they're Anne Sexton," Giménez Smith writes. But her poems defy easy comparisons with their verbal dexterity, intellectual savvy, and fleshy insistence. In a stunning collection that combines fairy tale, autobiography, ars poetica , and manifesto, Giménez Smith asks women artists to question not only the fables told about us, but the ones we tell ourselves."-Susan Briante, author of Utopia Minus, "Carmen Giménez-Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"-Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet, "Gimnez Smith generously deploys physical--often violent--imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism." -- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection." -- The Nation, "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."-Julia Sophia Paegle, author of Torch Song Tango Choir , "Giménez Smith generously deploys physical--often violent--imagery to challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism."-- Publishers Weekly "A sharp, feminist manifesto by way of poetry collection."-- The Nation "Allusive, metaphorical, and nimble in tone and register, Milk and Filth is aesthetically alive."-- Rain Taxi Review of Books "Giménez Smith is full of words--luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."-- Raven Chronicles "Carmen Giménez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"--Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."--Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ('Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.') The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Giménez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts."--Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation "Rabble-rouse, translator, good witch, Carmen Giménez Smith is an alchemist of disparate ingredients mixing the canonical and folkloric as well as high art and pop culture in poems that reference the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Wizard of Oz, Ana Mendietta and Joan Rivers. 'I want my problems to be Wallace Stevens but they're Anne Sexton,' Giménez Smith writes. But her poems defy easy comparisons with their verbal dexterity, intellectual savvy, and fleshy insistence. In a stunning collection that combines fairy tale, autobiography, arspoetica , and manifesto, Giménez Smith asks women artists to question not only the fables told about us, but the ones we tell ourselves."--Susan Briante, author of Utopia Minus, "Giménez Smith is full of words-luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."- The Raven Chronicles "Carmen Giménez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"-Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."-Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir, "Rabble-rouse, translator, good witch, Carmen Gimnez Smith is an alchemist of disparate ingredients mixing the canonical and folkloric as well as high art and pop culture in poems that reference the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Wizard of Oz, Ana Mendietta and Joan Rivers. 'I want my problems to be Wallace Stevens but they're Anne Sexton,' Gimnez Smith writes. But her poems defy easy comparisons with their verbal dexterity, intellectual savvy, and fleshy insistence. In a stunning collection that combines fairy tale, autobiography, ars poetica , and manifesto, Gimnez Smith asks women artists to question not only the fables told about us, but the ones we tell ourselves." --Susan Briante, author of Utopia Minus, "Giménez Smith is full of words-luscious, scabby, furious manifestos of self and culture."- The Raven Chronicles "Carmen Giménez Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"-Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."-Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir, "Carmen Giménez-Smith's Milk and Filth executes a benthic post-survival strategy wherein clawed, unlikely armaments unfurl from the tiniest coil of the conch. Here chimney-slim lyrics emit a scowl, a shiv, and a shriek while intricate tidal armies raise hot anthemic banners. Let us be as exclamation points to this puce-vermillion self-announcement!"-Joyelle McSweeney, author of Flet "From first read to multiple return, these poems root into the reader's own received cultural codes to challenge conventions of gender, culture, and chronology as reckoned by bodily human aging, the evolution of the literary canon, and the changing faces of an ineffable femininity."-Julia Sophia Paegle, author of torch song tango choir, "Allusive, metaphorical, and nimble in tone and register, Milk and Filth is aesthetically alive." -- Rain Taxi Review of Books "This book surprised me. I thought I was sitting down to read some more somewhat confessional and yet somewhat abstracted poems about life in the first world. And then I realized I was reading a scathing critique of the niceties of this tradition that was drawing from second wave feminists, such as Ana Mendieta and Valerie Solanas. ('Part-Cesaire, part-Solanas, part blood-sweat-and-tears.') The devil here just might be feminism, the devil we all need. And with this devil Carmen Giménez Smith charts out a heritage, a resistance, a possibility, a poetry that troubles and tempts." --Juliana Spahr, author of The Transformation
