Description
Alex Dimitrov’s third book, Love and Other Poems, is full of praise for the world we live in. Taking time as an overarching structure―specifically, the twelve months of the year―Dimitrov elevates the everyday, and speaks directly to the reader as if the poem were a phone call or a text message. From the personal to the cosmos, the moon to New York City, the speaker is convinced that love is “our best invention.” Dimitrov doesn’t resist joy, even in despair. These poems are curious about who we are as people and shamelessly interested in hope.
Praise for Alex
“Full of fierce astonishment, Dimitrov’s wide-eyed collection asks us as humans―’Some brutes who screamed / for everything to look at us’―to take a moment and gaze back out at the world. Because ‘to be queer / is a way to forgive life,’ what we might find there is comfort and pleasure: ‘I love opening a window in a room/ I love the feeling of possibility by the end of the first cup of / coffee.’ Written with the winking intimacy of a Twitter DM, these poems suggest that even aloneness can be a shared experience.” ―O, The Oprah Magazine
“A highly pleasurable, heavily Frank O’Hara–influenced collection in love with moments and New York City and the aesthetics of cyclical ephemerality (see ‘November’: ‘Is the first snow just snow./It feels like more’), full of exuberance and wistfulness, longing and joy.”―New York Times
“Joyous and captivating . . . Meditations on humanity’s search for meaning are handled with wit and vulnerability. . . . In this affecting collection, his most fully achieved thus far, Dimitrov provides the reader with a needed celebration of pleasures.”―Publishers Weekly, starred review
About Alex Dimitrov
Alex Dimitrov is the author of three books of poems, including Love and Other Poems, as well as the chapbook American Boys. His work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. He was the former senior content editor at the Academy of American Poets, where he edited Poem-A-Day and American Poets. He has taught creative writing at Princeton University, Columbia University, and Barnard College, among other institutions. With Dorothea Lasky, he is the co-author of Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac. Dimitrov lives in New York.