Ecstasy - by Alex Dimitrov (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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. One poem, "Today I Love Being Alive," finds the poet naked in his kitchen and eating a banana, obsessed with a new lover, declaring "I don't care about being remembered. / I care about...Strong men. Beautiful sentences. Italian leather" while in "Poppers" he stands light-headed 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 strict 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"--

Book Synopsis

A fearless, revelatory collection from one of the most talked-about poets in America, whose poems have been embraced by critics and readers alike as candid, intimate, and magnetically charged ("like catching a glimpse of the full moon in the middle of the day" --Bomb)

"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.

Review Quotes

"The inimitable Dimitrov returns with a fourth collection that brims with indulgent desire, metropolitan trysts, and deceptively effortless humor. . . . 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." --Booklist (starred review)

"Reading an Alex Dimitrov poem is like the first sip of a martini: revelatory, glam, and sedating. Whether he's writing about inhaling poppers, eating bananas in the kitchen with a new lover, or nearly getting hit by a taxi cab while looking at the tulips on Fifth Avenue, we'll drink up every one of these poems." --Language Arts

"Honest depictions of hookups, partying, and drug use, plus undertones of heartbreak. . . . [We] are transported through the streets and local haunts of New York, Miami and Paris. . . . Dimitrov's collection is fast paced, in-the-moment, and reflective. . . sure to make connections with readers." --Library Journal

"Dimitrov gets his eros right. Rather, and perhaps more importantly, he lives it, an embodied building full of places and spaces that others can enter . . . The ubiquitous ache within Dimitrov's words add up to the delicious tide of unfulfilled want, that thing not realized, made all the more powerful because of it." --Antiphony

About the Author

ALEX DIMITROV is the author of four books of poems, including Love and Other Poems, as well as the chapbook American Boys. His work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. He was the former senior content editor at the Academy of American Poets, where he edited Poem-A-Day and American Poets. He has taught creative writing at Princeton University, Columbia University, and Barnard College, among other institutions. With Dorothea Lasky, he is the co-author of Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac. Dimitrov lives in New York City.