You Are Indeed An Elk But This is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze

Kyle McCords You Are Indeed an Elk but This Is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze consists of thirty single-stanza wonders of the world-ferociously associative disjunctively digressive and melodiously surprising wherever they roam. Their acro-battery blasts of talky power are rich with joy and pathos not to mention also an abiding and sometimes biting ambivalence toward both the meadow of contemporary American culture and the unspeakable acts of kindness/ we committed together. This is a wonderfully tricked-out barrage of a book the wild life in wildlife and especially for you.-Matt Hart author of Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless I love the roaming and attentive eye through which we are invited to experience Kyle McCords new book You Are Indeed an Elk but This Is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze . Here are poems at once mystic intimate hilarious and completely enamored with the impossible world--the smoothest crest / of skyline smirked by a river / without a single thing to lose / itself inside is just one way this book amazingly imagines living and loving with others. I too feel that some days decorum may be all I have. Thank God this book reminds me that Im wrong. -Wendy Xu author of You Are Not Dead In this Kyle McCords fourth collection someone is always doing something ill-advised. Theres both trespassing (going where you shouldnt) and trespassing (doing what you shouldnt or sinning-- a word that has its etymological roots in archery: sinning as missing the mark. In other words the sinner has tried to do right and failed). Ive come to admire characters/ speakers/ real actual people who live bravely enough to sin in that kind of way. And McCords speaker is heroic as he journeys slaughters and devotes himself to potentially dangerous love affairs. I find this books title unusually helpful: Sure youre a an elk but youre not supposed to be doing that otherwise acceptable elk-thing here! which of course my brain translates to Sure youre a human and youre trying to be good at that by doing things you know humans do but dont do it that way! So. What Im saying is that this book is wondering how to live rightly. I wonder that all the time so Im glad someone as thoughtful and inventive as Kyle McCord is wondering with me. -Hannah Gamble author of Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast