2021
First Published
3.95
Average Rating
96
Number of Pages
From “a writer of breathtaking honesty” (David Ulin, LA Times ), gorgeous new poems that are satirical, open-hearted, and unrepentantly queer. In his poetry, “at once boisterous and lubed, anxious and ambivalent” ( Kenyon Review ), Randall Mann has always had his finger on the pulse of modern life. In his liminal new book of poetry, a gay, multiracial (“they called me yellow in Lexington”) speaker exists in the rift between the “fluorescent rot” of childhood and the “action; / transaction” of a sex-app midlife. The author of Straight Razor and Proprietary, Mann has long been admired for merging raw subject matter with formal ease. A Better Life shows him at the height of his gifts, in the clipped, haunting truth of its rhymes and rhythms.
Avg Rating
3.95
Number of Ratings
56
5 STARS
32%
4 STARS
34%
3 STARS
30%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Randall Mann
Author · 6 books
Randall Mann's DEAL: NEW & SELECTED POEMS is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in May 2023. He is also the author of the following books: A BETTER LIFE (Persea Books, 2021); PROPRIETARY (Persea Books, 2017), finalist for the Northern California Book Award and Lambda Literary Award; STRAIGHT RAZOR (Persea Books, 2013), a Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; BREAKFAST WITH THOM GUNN (Chicago, 2009), finalist for the California Book Award and Lambda Literary Award; and COMPLAINT IN THE GARDEN (Zoo/Orchises, 2004), winner of the 2003 Kenyon Review Prize. In addition, he has written a book of criticism, THE ILLUSION OF INTIMACY: ON POETRY (Diode Editions, 2019). Winner of the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry magazine. Poems and prose in The Adroit Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Lit Hub, The Cortland Review, and The Kenyon Review.
