Chelsey Minnis

Poems both punishing and radiant. No one is writing like Minnis, and no one should dare.

Poemland

Baby, I Don't Care

Zirconia

Bad Bad

This poet's rapt, driven affect and glazed wit heralded a new strategy in the mitigation of female self-hatred in poetry.

Zirconia ...................... Bad Bad

Bad Bad moves the unabashedly juvenile persona elliptically constructed in Zirconia into a seriously amusing, un - blushing womanhood. The poems are equally clownish and fuck-offish, taking on with equivocal weightlessness the lexicons and trimmings of fashion, as it applies to the Self and the garments that clothe the Self, and self-obliteration, as experienced through immersion in the delights and disgust of the Other. "come on the revulsion//the revulsion//// when ////you bring it home////like seafoam//when you bring it home.... ," she writes, in an ecstasy of encounter. Minnis addresses the inner needs of the poet--"the purpose of poetry is to seem as lifelike as possible so that you actually exist"--and is everywhere concerned with the denotation of that which is true and necessary to the true and necessary poet. "it is a poem//which is a trough////where you can make your reputation////as a stiff///anyway, I am not trying to be human anymore//////I am trying to be smart....in the head....like a pissant......."

Chelsey Minnis

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