Description
As I read these poems, I feel as though I’m bailing out of a German fairy tale with a chute that might or might not open. I don’t care, though. Jason Bredle’s night sky is as beautiful as it is scary—I’m happy to fall through it forever.
—David Kirby, author of Talking about Movies with Jesus
Strange, prickly, absurd, hilarious, revelatory, somehow lonely, somehow lovely, Jason Bredle’s Carnival is the tour guide you’re not sure you should trust in the foreign city. But you should. Trust me. I am a medical doctor and I know. Each poem takes you down a series of blind alleys—seemingly flat sentences, often odd, amusing, compellingly disjointed—and while you’re not quite sure where you’re going, you end up on a promontory overlooking the city from a vantage point that, if you weren’t here, you’d swear was impossible. But you are here. So enjoy the view. It’s spectacular. Don’t forget to tip your guide. Dramamine is recommended if you’re susceptible to motion sickness or vertigo.
—Ander Monson, author of The Available World
Jason Bredle’s poems approach the world like a haunted cat approaches a glacier, curious and itchy with strangeness. In Carnival, he skates paratactically between states of being: levity, heart-holes, licks of darkness, lovesickness and werewolfishness. Bredle’s gift as a poet is to traverse and re-traverse one looking glass in ten different moods. When he goes through it, we are taken.
—Melissa Broder, author of Meat Heart
