Ecstasy Poems

The inimitable Dimitrov (Love and Other Poems, 2021), winner of the Stanley Kunitz Prize, returns with a fourth collection that brims with indulgent desire, metropolitan trysts, and deceptively effortless humor. Steeped in the streets of New York and escapist escapades to Miami, Dimitrov's speakers can be brash, dismissive, and flippant, but a current of undeniable longing underscores the lyrics. Central to the collection are carnal cravings and their frustrated pursuits. A cheeky suite of poems takes inspiration from the seven deadly sins, including "Gluttony" ("once you've had what you want / you just want it again"), "Pride" ("Gay pride sponsored by Chase bank starts now"), and "Wrath" ("The men who punish me first / are the ones I most understand"). Other poems derive pleasure from poppers, Xanax, cocaine, and ketamine even as their speakers wrestle with questions of addiction and solitude ("Complaining about loneliness / and asking everyone to leave me alone"). Equal parts exhibitionist and chronicler of urban misadventures, Dimitrov is a quintessentially American poet of risk-taking and revelation, one who writhes in ecstasy and agony.

In the fourth collection from Dimitrov (Love and Other Poems), readers are transported through the streets and local haunts of New York, Miami and Paris. "I walk up / and down Sixth Avenue / thinking of who I was six years ago. / The waiters at The Odeon / wink at me. A woman / in a gold dress drinks alone / and men in suits talk of the market." There are honest depictions of hookups, partying, and drug use, plus undertones of heartbreak and depression: "Blew money mindlessly each afternoon. / Not because I had it. / But because I wanted to dig / so far down, if I left myself there / how could anything touch me." Readers are taken from present day back to glimpses of adolescence throughout the collection, with multiple poems focusing on the experiences of a queer boy growing up in the United States in the 1990s. VERDICT Dimitrov's collection is fast paced, in-the-moment, and reflective. It is sure to make connections with readers, both those who are familiar with his writing and those who are newly discovering it.--Sarah Michaelis