Honest James - Christian Schlegel

Honest James by Christian Schlegel / ISBN 9780988464384 / 80-page paperback published by The Song Cave

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“One of the strangest books of poetry to come along in some time, Christian Schlegel’s Honest James seems to draw inspiration from the back corridors and anterooms of poetry.” ―John Ashbery

With setting moons, talking tulips and the peacefulness found in a horse's mane, the poems in Christian Schlegel's debut collection Honest James might be as difficult to describe as the layered notes of an ancient perfume: “A famous notion twirled and froze. I made it mine. / Again it twirled.” This unabashedly lyrical collection, which never shies away from rhyme, includes various cameos, such as Goethe in its second section, with the end result being what John Ashbery calls “one of the strangest books of poetry to come along in some time.”

Born and raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Christian Schlegel lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and is an English PhD student at Harvard. His work has appeared in Company, Lana Turner and The American Reader.