My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge - by Paul Guest (Paperback)

From the Back Cover

My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge is a fierce and original collection--its generosity of voice and emotional range announce the arrival of a major new poet.

At the age of twelve, Paul Guest suffered a bicycle accident that left him paralyzed for life. But out of sudden disaster evolved a fierce poetic sensibility--one that blossomed into a refuge for all the grief, fury, and wonder at life forever altered. Although its legacy lies in tragedy, the voice of these brilliant poems cuts a broad swath of emotions: whether he is lamenting the potentiality of physical experience or imagining the electric temptations of sexuality, Guest offers us a worldview that is unshakable in its humanity.

Review Quotes

"The invalid's rage . . . and the ridiculousness of it all inform Paul Guest's wonderful poems, flung one after another in the teeth of 'daily' life, each an act of defiance that affirms the terrible power of that life. One thinks of Elizabeth Bishops' lines, "the fiery event/ of every day in endless/ endless assent." - John Ashbery, author of NOTES FROM THE AIR and WHERE SHALL I WANDER

"Irreversible, permanent physical damage would seem less a potential source of art than an obstacle to it: it will not lend itself to the work of imagination; it will not, in a different light, seem a different thing; it is more powerful as a fact than anything that could be said about it. Paul Guest does not sentimentalize disaster; it remains irreversible, immense--and yet it emerges that there are things to be said, about it and through it, I would not have imagined. An urgent and moving book." - Louise Gluck

"A beautiful, breathless torrent of language that is dark or insightful or funny or any combination thereof, but always on the mark, always riveting. . . . My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge is a terrific book. " - Mark Strand

"There is no escaping the circumstances in which Paul Guest produced these fierce and unnerving poems. He was almost entirely paralyzed by an accident at the age of twelve. In the meantime, he has made himself into a poet with powerful and unexpected things to say about the world . . . seen from an angle of experience not available to most of us . . . people will read them for what is fresh, headlong, surprising and alive and bitter and sweet in them--for their ability to make us see." - Robert Hass

"I insist you read Paul Guest's twisted, derisive, sardonic poetry." - The Stranger (Seattle)

"Paralyzed in a bicycle accident at age 12, Guest as an adult has turned his serious anger, his irrepressible energies and his sex drive into an instantly recognizable and passionate style . . . the poems race, churn and tumble over themselves with a welcome, often R-rated, power of invention. Guest might be Percy Bysshe Shelley crossed with Nick Flynn, or Neruda fused with Dean Young, at once perpetually dissatisfied and breathless with anticipation. . . . Guest's fast-paced, sometimes even offensive third volume could be a poetry hit." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Astonishing." - Jorie Graham

"Guest takes the reader on a path like few contemporary poets offer." - Chicago Sun-Times