Lunch

A Divine Comedy #2

by D.A. Powell

A direct and moving account of a young man's life in a time of plague.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

76 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2000

About the author

D. A. Powell is the author of Tea, Lunch, Cocktails, Chronic and Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry in 2013.

Repast, Powell's latest, collects his three early books in a handsome volume introduced by novelist David Leavitt.

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

Reviews

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I like this one a hair less than "Tea," but the language here is frequently stunning and powerful. I've heard "Cocktails" is even better, so I'm really looking forward to that! As Powell ends his collection, I "want my goddamn cocktail(s)."

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much every poem in the first section is amazing, especially [triptych:], which is absolutely beautiful, if a bit atypical of the book. The rest of the poems are intensely dark and funny, fragmented, suggestive.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Threading through stories of lovers lost to disease and facing his own mortality, at the waiting area of lunch that splits the day, that transcends the day, here is D.A. Powell as wordplayful as ever, as smart as ever, speaking in some of the coded tongue only gay men can translate. Wow.

[Luis Correa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unsurprisingly great. Fun turns of phrase, quick, witty, memorable, and poignant. Waka waka waka.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best.

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"at night the anvils sing bingbong/them kids is pounding out more kids. listen: dna clicks its chainmail/old soldier my body cannot hold: rickety ark./no more doves can land here"

[jovan]

3.5. loved the form. some hits and misses. could tell he was still figuring tone out. counterintuitively when the diction was simpler the form started working more brilliantly with images as supercut.