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Cocktails (A Divine Comedy #3)
by
D.A. Powell (Goodreads Author)
kids everywhere are called to supper: it's late
it's dark and you're all played out. you want to go home
no rule is left to this game. playmates scatter like
breaking glass
they return to smear the ______. and you're it
--from "[you'd want to go to the reunion: see]"
In Cocktails, D. A. Powell closes his contemporary Divine Comedy with poems of sharp wit and graceful eloquence...more
it's dark and you're all played out. you want to go home
no rule is left to this game. playmates scatter like
breaking glass
they return to smear the ______. and you're it
--from "[you'd want to go to the reunion: see]"
In Cocktails, D. A. Powell closes his contemporary Divine Comedy with poems of sharp wit and graceful eloquence...more
Paperback, 72 pages
Published
March 1st 2004
by Graywolf Press
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I've had this book for a while. I ordered it a couple years ago after a refreshing review in one of the gay magazines.
Someone did the author a favor.
I confess that I'm far from an academic poet. In fact, I despise that 'ivory tower' verse that seems to be written for a handful of other academics. It is precisely this type of poetry that has resulted in poetry's unpopular status as an art form. It has been deemed unapproachable.
Powell's 'Cocktails' takes this unapproachability to a new level. I m...more
Someone did the author a favor.
I confess that I'm far from an academic poet. In fact, I despise that 'ivory tower' verse that seems to be written for a handful of other academics. It is precisely this type of poetry that has resulted in poetry's unpopular status as an art form. It has been deemed unapproachable.
Powell's 'Cocktails' takes this unapproachability to a new level. I m...more
Cocktails is the third book of Powell’s trilogy. The first thing I noticed when reading Cocktails was his signature long line length. The book is wider than the industry standard paperback. The format of the poems was somewhat off-putting until I started reading them aloud. Powell uses minimum punctuation and abrupt phrases. His poems have a hip-hop, or rap, rhythm to them, which increases the intensity. The rhythm becomes obvious when these poems are read aloud.
The collection is divided into 3...more
The collection is divided into 3...more
Apr 30, 2012
Khara House
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone
Recommended to Khara by:
Nicole Walker
This was a brilliant, beautiful, and moving collection of poetic narratives. Powell cleverly blends Pop Culture and several other familiar references (biographical, scriptural/liturgical, cinematic, etc.) to guide readers painstakingly through the landscapes of life: through sex and sexuality, through memory and loss, through "cocktails" both drank and swallowed via a cocktail of anti-AIDS drugs. Powell doesn't pull any punches here, yet he does pull out all the stops, and while some poems will...more
D.A. Powell is a master of using overt sexuality to mask an even more masterful underlying subtext. It's amazing how someone can toy with language in such a way a refrain can seem present within a poem were words and phrases do not repeat. Coctails shows the mundane and shocking complexity of everyday for a gay man in a city of brick and blue collar. Whereas Tea was a eulogy, a book of AIDS and loss and the lives claimed, Coctails is its opposite, its Whitmanesque singing. His approach to the li...more
For Powell, desire is a many splendoured thing. Desire is every word that you can fit in your mouth, sometimes, at least if it’s giving off that keen, unctuous, sweet flavor. It all threads through the image, or homoerotic narrative, or pop culture reference. Desire is D. A. Powell and he describes it as soft, sweet, persistent rhythm.
One of my favorite books from poetry class this term. Powell speaks on pop culture the way past poets have spoken about Greek and Roman mythology and gives ethos to new forms of expression of the modern age.
This man is a genius: amazing vocabulary and dexterity of tone. Only he could make a sexualized Santa Claus poem gruesome and heartbreaking. Ditto the poem inspired by Hook. Awesome.
Pop culture, LGBTQ culture, movies, language, words words words. This is my favorite contemporary poetry collection to date.
Mar 06, 2009
Gerardo
added it
It is an interesting book. It is really hard to follow, but this is its beauty. I really enjoy it as it is a challenging book!
Fabulous. Some of these poems are almost incandescent with wit. That said, the patterns becomes quickly deciphered. I could write a D.A. Powell poem after reading this book. Not a criticism, but worth noting...along with the fact that musicality is at the heart of this collection.
this is one hot, sad book. loveliness.
Always brilliant.
Feb 10, 2008
Nick Pappas
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
people on the outside of poetry who want to get in
Shelves:
poetry
I'm not what you would call a big fan of poetry, but the work in this book is quite good. Powell is a poet who loves word play, sounds, rhyme, and structure. This book of poetry about AIDS is quite a read, though the first third is the best group in the bunch. Thats not to say there aren't gems found later on in the book. From the egnigmatic title "Cocktails", does he mean the drinks or the pills an AIDS patient takes, this book will have you thinking.
As I expected coming into this, "Cocktails" was certainly my favorite of D.A. Powell's trilogy, and I really liked both "Tea" and "Lunch." Perhaps I had been primed for this by my favorite two poems in here, both of which I had read before, "[writing for a young man on the redline train: "to his boy mistress"]" and "[when you touch down upon this earth. little reindeers]." Still, there are many poems in here to rival these. Fantastic.
There were poems that I absolutely adore and there are some that just wash right through me. It was a lot of hot/cold. But I liked it for the most part. I liked how the tones changed, but the style remained.
He gets a point for mentioning courtesy clerks, but loses a point for mentioning My Own Private Idaho (a movie I personally detest).
He gets a point for mentioning courtesy clerks, but loses a point for mentioning My Own Private Idaho (a movie I personally detest).
What many reviews of this book fail to note is the 360 degree view the book has--not just elegaic, but sexy and funny and plain and lyric and human and every other damned thing. The best thing I learned from DA Powell was that every line of a poem is a poem in itself. There's some standard to live up to.
I cannot possibly express the emotional reaction that Cocktails provided me with. His poems about being a homosexual suffering from HIV are are realistic and harsh.
Brilliant, moving, amazing. I love this book and teach it often. Powell is also an incredible reader of his own poetry.
I agree with Craig Teicher: Doug Powell is an important poet of his generation.
This is, I think, so far, the major book by the rising generations of poets.
Sep 01, 2008
Crystal Curry
added it
The only poetry book that has ever made me weep.
He liked my poem. But not as much as I liked his.
This book makes me like poetry again.
In my top ten for sure.
May 12, 2013
Caitlin Demo
marked it as to-read
May 10, 2013
Alex
added it
May 05, 2013
Pamela Hitchcock
marked it as to-read
Apr 30, 2013
Lauren
added it
Apr 28, 2013
Liza
marked it as to-read
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D. A. Powell is the author of Tea, Lunch, Cocktails, and Chronic. His latest collection, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry in 2013.
A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, Powell lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Follow D. A. Powell on Twitter: Powell_DA
More about D.A. Powell...
A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, Powell lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Follow D. A. Powell on Twitter: Powell_DA
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Jun 07, 2012 10:01am