The Velvet Book

<p>When stargazing certain phenomena can only be seen with peripheral sight. I'm reminded of this fact by Rae Gouirand's long poem <em>The Velvet Book</em> whose indirect engagement with subjects yields true vision. Love death the past what might yet be possible what a self is and is not-all are strung together here like sumptuous light-shot gems and the couplets that carry them flow easily as brook water page into page into page. This book is a beautiful experience.</p><p><strong>-Christopher Nelson</strong></p><p> </p><p>By turns measured sharp slippery and ecstatic Rae Gouirand's <em>The Velvet Book</em> is a stunning achievement. With a studious prismatic eye (and ear) Gouirand attends to the sumptuous and mysterious folds of velvet of the space between what we wear and who we are of the overlap between interior and exterior. Ultimately this book is a learned generous and queer meditation on commitment on the question of how to stay/and then how to allow for drift on the marriage between the self and the other that finds itself in language and the body of the beloved.</p><p><strong>-Brent Armendinger</strong></p><p> </p><p><em>The Velvet Book</em> is restless it refuses to settle. Under the cover of velvet dreaming velvet it feels its edges and disorientations its zones of endlessness. Here thought rustles and deepens velvet-tongued and moves us to impossibly dizzying places where everything touches. The Velvet Book is heartfelt questing sumptuous-a meditation on grief and love and their textures on what is and isn't possible to promise on what it means to be a fully available living self.</p><p><strong>-Richard Siken</strong></p>