Room Where I Get What I Want

“S. Whitney Holmes uses anaphora in ways that would make Ginsberg marvel and sigh. These poems repeat words and phrases as a shaman might if chanting to make a prayer heard in the supernatural realm. Holmes isn’t interested in the supernatural though.  Instead, this poet wants to know if these incantations can lead to something physical, something made from the brick and mortar of words, or as Holmes would say: ‘The built house, unbuilds itself.’ This is a thrilling debut.” —Jericho Brown

“Defiant and defenseless, seductive and cool, hyper-attentive and wishing for oblivion, these poems vibrate with a compressed ambivalence—‘You have trouble telling when I am sincere / but you are not alone’—always about to explode. ‘I build a house. / Can you live in it?’ The danger is manifest, but who could resist?” —Joel Brouwer