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Sympathy from the Devil

by Kyle McCord (Goodreads Author)

5.0 of 5 stars 5.00 · rating details · 11 ratings · 2 reviews

In Kyle McCord’s mercurial and visionary new book, Sympathy from the Devil, we see a bold refiguring of the moral imagination that, like a Dante without a Beatrice, wanders hell bereft of the traditional compass that would clarify the archetypes. Here the eye opens wide its compassion in the dark. Play transgresses and so, in opposition to the self-servitude of sublimity a...more In Kyle McCord’s mercurial and visionary new book, Sympathy from the Devil, we see a bold refiguring of the moral imagination that, like a Dante without a Beatrice, wanders hell bereft of the traditional compass that would clarify the archetypes. Here the eye opens wide its compassion in the dark. Play transgresses and so, in opposition to the self-servitude of sublimity and rapture, sheds light on cruelties and exclusions suffered in the name of the ideal. Everywhere we look in this book, we find the generosity and precision of paradox. The pleasure of absurdity may distance heartbreak, but it likewise binds us to it, such that the poet’s lightness of touch and ranginess of sensibility becomes indistinguishable from his vision, the sense that one half of sympathy is always the embrace, the other the letting go. A stunning collection.

--Bruce Bond, Author of The Visible//

In Kyle McCord’s new book Gabriel empathizes, the Devil sympathizes, and an exhausted God watches a televangelist. Moving, imaginative and full of surprising turns, McCord’s poems are alive with both the world and the dead who “have no word for intimate, and a thousand words for blind.” I love the abundance of these poems, their humor, the music that made my ears howl and purr. When I dream about McCord’s poems dreaming of me, I ride an aging mechanical bull, werewolves take over the city, Abraham Lincoln begs to rip off my blouse, God’s love vanishes into my body like bread. I wake up hungry, afraid, laughing.

--Traci Brimhall, Author of Our Lady of the Ruins//

“What do you want from any of us, reader?” asks the first poem in Kyle McCord’s Sympathy from the Devil, bristling a bit, cocking its chin, letting us know that what follows will never be exactly what we expect. The book brims with wily intelligence and unsettling humor that challenge and surprise and thrill and move us so that in the end what we want is everything this terrific book has to give.

—Corey Marks, Author of The Radio Tree(less)

Paperback, 82 pages

Published January 1st 2013 by Gold Wake Press

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The Early Death of Men by Clint Margrave

Best of New 2012 Poetry Books

38th out of 93 books — 207 voters

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Mar 15, 2013 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

I've always been a fan of Kyle's work but he really kills it in "Sympathy," balancing the genuinely funny (not just vaguely witty) by toggling between the intimate, the surreal, and wood-paneled rumpus room-esque referentiality.

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Feb 25, 2013 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

See my review of this amazing collection in Pank Magazine!

http://www.pankmagazine.com/pankblog/...

1 like · like · see review

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