Cruel Futures: City Lights Spotlight No. 17, Paperback/Carmen Gimenez Smith

Descriere

A Latina feminist State of the Union address at the intersection of pop culture and interiority. Cruel Futures, the fifth collection from Latinx feminista Carmen Gimenez Smith, is a witchy confessional and wildly imagistic volume that examines subjects as divergent as Alzheimers, Medusa, mumblecore, and mental illness in sharp-witted, taut poems dense with song. Chronicling life on an endangered planet, in a country on the precipice of profound change compelled by a media machine that produces our realities, the book is a high-energy analysis of popular culture, as well as an exploration of the many social roles that women occupy as mother, daughter, lover, and the resulting struggle to maintain personhood--all in a late capitalist America. Like Joanne Kyger, Gimenez Smith deploys humor while depicting the quotidian and its function as sacrament. Carmen Gimenez Smith received a BA in English at San Jose State University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the author, most recently, of Milk and Filth, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle award in poetry. She was awarded an American Book Award for her memoir Bring Down the Little Birds (2010) and the Juniper Prize for Poetry for Goodbye, Flicker (2012). She also co-edited Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing (2014), an anthology of contemporary Latinx writing. She now serves on the planning committee for Canto Mundo and on the board of RASA. She serves as the publisher of Noemi Press. She is a professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech and the poetry co-editor for The Nation.