Notes for My Body Double

“How can there be radiance and plentitude in the dark, diminished world? What can a child's broken neck make of the future? Paul Guest's poems are answers to these questions. They are incandescent, terrifying, scalding, and unafraid to be lovely. In Guest's poems ardor marries grief. Blood beats a mighty river. The idiotic weds the sublime. Romance meets its nullifying twin. They have the force of wonder. They wound. Notes For My Body Double accrues a music that channels Muscle Shoals and Memphis—a blues of hunger, angels, secrets and fire.”—Bruce Smith, author of Songs for Two Voices

“Paul Guest has managed to write, simultaneously, to and of himself, in poems that balance the narrative and lyrical impulses with uncommon grace.”—Bob Hicok, author of This Clumsy Living

“Notes for My Body Double has the utmost integrity: all its parts interconnect and clearly relate to an overarching theme. The poet underscores this by arranging the poems in a continuous rush forcing the reader into the skin of the one whose future has altered in an instant. Whatever redemption the speaker experiences arrives primarily through love of language and imagination (‘In praise of the fat moon, in praise of my howl’). This relentless collection is not easy to read, but its rewards are manifold.”—Carole Simmons Oles, author of Waking Stone: Inventions on the Life of Harriet Hosmer