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The Gardens of Our Childhoods (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781637680353)
Vendor:
John Belk
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Books
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Description
xPoems considering self, masculinity, and culture through the spectacle of professional wrestling.
In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods, the distance between spectacle and reality blurs. Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus "Buff" Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us. The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press's Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.
Author: John Belk
ISBN-10: 163768035X
ISBN-13: 9781637680353
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Language: English
Published: 04/18/2022
Pages: 74
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.90w x 0.30d
In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods, the distance between spectacle and reality blurs. Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus "Buff" Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us. The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press's Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.
Author: John Belk
ISBN-10: 163768035X
ISBN-13: 9781637680353
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Language: English
Published: 04/18/2022
Pages: 74
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.90w x 0.30d
By John Belk
xJohn Belk is an associate professor of English at Southern Utah University and author of the chapbook The Weathering of Igneous Rockforms in High-Altitude Riparian Environments. His poems have appeared in the Maine Review, Jet Fuel Review, Sugar House Review, Salt Hill, Poetry South, Crab Orchard Review, and Sport Literate, among others. He has published articles in Rhetoric Review, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Composition Forum, and various anthologies. He lives in Cedar City, Utah.
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