{"product_id":"9781935520405","title":"Cool Limbo","description":"COOL LIMBO is a series of dazzling portraits that are accessible yet complex, hilarious yet poignant, down-to-earth yet ethereal. Like its cover, which features the title poem's sexy 70's chick lounging-stoned-by the pool (as she neglects the water-winged kids she's supposed to be babysitting), the book is the best kind of party-unofficial, unpretentious, and unabashed. And everyone's there \"on plastic lawn furniture...with six packs and lit cigarettes:\" From Liz Taylor, Gertrude Stein, and The Golden Girls, to Orpheus, Vanity Smurf, and Stevie Nicks. Poem after poem, these figures somehow mingle with the poet, in the not-so-still life studies of his boisterous family and friends, building a narrative about the departure from suburbia to the big city (from the ghost of a boy to a realized though sometimes-haunted man)-all while commenting on, as Elaine Equi puts it, the \"constantly shifting sexual codes\" assigned to men and women alike. Few places can you find a poem about a gay porn star that concerns itself with the meaning of objectivity and art just pages after a charged feminist manifesto called \"If Hello Kitty Had a Mouth.\" But beyond that colorful variety of subject and theme, not to mention his mastery of dialogue and what Mark Bibbins calls \"devious one-liners,\" what's most remarkable about this poet in his debut collection is his ability to confront the serious and painful while never abandoning his sharp sense of humor and playful spirit.","brand":"NYQ Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47044133880048,"sku":"9781935520405","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781935520405_p0.jpg?v=1763656941","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781935520405","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}