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“Ecstasy is a rollicking paean to pleasure, an ode to realness and resilience.” –Tas Tobey, New York Times
Alex Dimitrov embraces a life on the edge in New York and the finely wrought poetry that can come out of it as he explores sex, drugs, parties, pleasure, and God in the 2020s, and looks back to a coming-of-age in the 1990s that still informs who his generation is and will be. His unabashed and drivingly musical poems are a call against repression, a rebuke of cultural norms and shame, and a celebration of human authenticity—even if to live under such philosophies is dangerous. In “Today I Love Being Alive,” we find the poet naked in his kitchen, eating a banana and obsessed with a new lover, declaring “I don't care about being remembered. / I care about . . . Strong men. Beautiful sentences. Italian leather;” in “Poppers," he stands lightheaded in the bathroom at a bar, “thinking of what to do / with the rest of my life,” and issuing a warning to himself and us: “Poetry / is not a self-help book.”
Dimitrov is an iconographer of contemporary life, able to pin profound and timeless meaning to a fleeting encounter in the street. Ecstasy also engages with the poet’s Christian upbringing, interrogating faith as both an enemy and valve of catharsis, and a bedfellow of what this book celebrates and courts: profound human ecstasy.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 1, 2025 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593802939
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593802939
- File size: 746 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 1, 2025
In the fourth collection from Dimitrov (Love and Other Poems), readers are transported through the streets and local haunts of New York, Miami and Paris. "I walk up / and down Sixth Avenue / thinking of who I was six years ago. / The waiters at The Odeon / wink at me. A woman / in a gold dress drinks alone / and men in suits talk of the market." There are honest depictions of hookups, partying, and drug use, plus undertones of heartbreak and depression: "Blew money mindlessly each afternoon. / Not because I had it. / But because I wanted to dig / so far down, if I left myself there / how could anything touch me." Readers are taken from present day back to glimpses of adolescence throughout the collection, with multiple poems focusing on the experiences of a queer boy growing up in the United States in the 1990s. VERDICT Dimitrov's collection is fast paced, in-the-moment, and reflective. It is sure to make connections with readers, both those who are familiar with his writing and those who are newly discovering it.--Sarah Michaelis
Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from March 1, 2025
The inimitable Dimitrov (Love and Other Poems, 2021), winner of the Stanley Kunitz Prize, returns with a fourth collection that brims with indulgent desire, metropolitan trysts, and deceptively effortless humor. Steeped in the streets of New York and escapist escapades to Miami, Dimitrov's speakers can be brash, dismissive, and flippant, but a current of undeniable longing underscores the lyrics. Central to the collection are carnal cravings and their frustrated pursuits. A cheeky suite of poems takes inspiration from the seven deadly sins, including "Gluttony" ("once you've had what you want / you just want it again"), "Pride" ("Gay pride sponsored by Chase bank starts now"), and "Wrath" ("The men who punish me first / are the ones I most understand"). Other poems derive pleasure from poppers, Xanax, cocaine, and ketamine even as their speakers wrestle with questions of addiction and solitude ("Complaining about loneliness / and asking everyone to leave me alone"). Equal parts exhibitionist and chronicler of urban misadventures, Dimitrov is a quintessentially American poet of risk-taking and revelation, one who writhes in ecstasy and agony.COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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