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.

Author: Michael Montlack
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: NYQ Books
Published: 05/15/2011
Pages: 120
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.28d
ISBN: 9781935520405

About the Author
Montlack, Michael: - In addition to being the editor of the nonfiction anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, Michael Montlack is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Cover Charge (Winner of the 2007 Gertrude Chapbook Competition); Girls, Girls, Girls (Pudding House, 2008); and The Slip (Poets Wear Prada, 2009). His work has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Court Green, Swink, 5 AM, Columbia Poetry Review, The Ledge, Poet Lore, Gay and Lesbian Review, Bloom, MiPOesias, and other journals. He has been awarded residencies at Soul Mountain Retreat (CT), Ucross (WY), Lambda Literary Foundation (CA) and VCCA (VA). He has also won the Tin House Poetry Scholarship and was a finalist for the Frank O'Hara Award and Brittingham/Pollak Competition. He splits his time between San Francisco and New York City, where he acts as an Associate Editor for Mudfish and teaches for Berkeley College. He holds an MFA (New School), an MA (San Francisco State) and a BA (Hofstra University), all in Creative Writing.