Going Head To Head by Wade Stevenson

Going Head to Head is a book-length poem meditating on life through the lens of the head, the senses it captures in the natural world, and the turmoil inside the mind. In this sonorous collection, we have the yoyo head, the shrunken head, the coin head, the disembodied head, and the conjoined head. In stanzas ranging from a single line to multi-page sections, we travel through the landscape of the head’s senses – sight, smell, and sound. The mind reflects upon Amor, God, the Galaxy, and the shadows thrown from them. The narrator’s head faces mirrors, love, loss, war, destruction and finally rebirth through the soul of the head, in an “Encore” poem at the end of the book. Going Head to Head reflects the madness of the modern world in a style and diction from a long-ago age, with unerring aim, and memorable refrains.

— Martin Ott, author of Underdays, University of Notre Dame Press

Freewheeling and rooted, prophetic and playful, madcap and sincere in the rich tradition of Vicente Huidobro’s Altazor, Wade Stevenson’s Going Head to Head is a rare, refreshing collection. It’s widely allusive and wildly (in)formal, moving in and out of rhyme schemes freely, filling the ancient long-poem form with SpaceX rockets and AI nightmares, all while dancing between the sacred and the profane with such gusto that soon it’s delightfully hard to tell the difference. Going along for this ride is a true pleasure.

— J.G. McClure, author of The Fire Lit & Nearing

Going Head to Head by Wade Stevenson is a wry and humane collection. With an elusive, exuberant sensibility his confident lyric expressions give us poems that are rich in idiosyncratic imagery. Speaking from a three-fold poetics of self-consciousness, critique and humor our collective shortcomings bounce in thrilling moments of lyricism skillfully balanced by an urbane desire to “Bringing a jolt to the electric heart.” Stevenson’s poems are shadow messages from the other side of us, messages that unshackle the being and let the mind loose in the dynamic field centered in the lump above one’s shoulders.

— Geoffrey Gatza

Wade Stevenson lives in Buffalo, NY

Book Information:

· Paperback: 70 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-354-6

$16

Going Head to Head by Wade … by BlazeVOX [books]