Octavio Solis > Recent Status Updates

Damn fine piece of work. I take pleasure in each sentence. Entire worlds composed of the minutiae of our lived lives take on new meaning through the eyes of this writer.

This book of poems is my balm. The world is a sad and lonely place and this is an atlas for that world. Each poem whispers my name.

Wow. I never thought this novel could get any better, but each chapter outdoes the one before it. The tone changes are flawlessly maneuvered as the author shifts from one time period to another and from one protagonist to his/her sixth degree of separation. Agonizing and recognizably human.

The fucking luckiest woman on earth. Caught between period and still at the right place at the right time. Who else can say they made love to Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shepard and Jim Carroll, and also met Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Allen Ginsburg and hung around Todd Rundgren, Harry Smith, Gregory Corso and Anne Waldman? Who? The book is a fascinating immersion into an era I hardly knew.

Finished this awesome collection.

Finished!

"Maybe poems are made of breath, the way water, cajoled to boil, says, This is my soul, freed." (from "Scarecrow on Fire")

Zipping through this one but slowing down to deal with the dense vernacular. I want to learn more about horses and horse-racing culture, and this book pushes me into the deep end without a lesson.

A great prose stylist. Gorgeous way with language. There are passages that scan like poetry, they are so musical and rich.

Absolutely riveting. There is in this epic a great detective yarn which builds to such a satisfying climax and yet launches us inexorably into the next chapter backwards in time.