The Fire Road, Nicholas Yingling

$18.00

 

ISBN: 9781962131018
Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 92
Publication date: 04/15/2024

 

Applicable bookseller/retail discount on bulk orders of 10+ copies automatically applied at checkout.

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A fire road is an unpaved road, usually outside a city, that helps create a containment line to stop wildfires. It’s a road designed for control, not destination. In Los Angeles, wealthy denizens of the hills use them to exercise. A ‘fire’ road, of course, also suggests something elemental, hellish, a spiritual path designed to consume you. Steeped in LA wellness culture, the speakers of The Fire Road conflate asceticism and anorexia. They mythologize mental illness. Allusions to Genesis and the sutras stand in tension with body horror. Shifting between confessional and mystical, the poems ask: is there a middle way? Is there an escape from the body? From a culture consuming itself to death?