Gina

Jesse Millner's Gina is a fever dream of poems that ricochet from the speaker's childhood to adulthood, from Florida to New Mexico, from earth to space, from hunger to pizza, from Chicago taverns to the foamy Pacific--all beginning with the memory of Gina and a moment of dizzying, transcendent grace.

In these beautifully-modulated, tender and terrifying poems, Jesse Millner challenges us to feel more acutely, to see more viscerally, and to honor the vicissitudes and confusions of the inner life without pretense or self-inflation. Wildly imagined and solidly grounded, the poems in Gina feel simultaneously brand-new and ancient, like half-remembered dreams or our own half-forgotten lives. That is to say, they have the feeling of brand-new ancient memories. When this poet says he is "hungry for more constant light," we believe him, and grow hungry ourselves. He's not playing games. This is real. --Michael Hettich, author of A Sharper Silence