Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara
by William Fargason
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Pub Date Apr 01 2020 | Archive Date Apr 01 2020
University of Iowa Press | University Of Iowa Press
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Description
In his debut collection, William Fargason inspects the pain of memory alongside the pain of the physical body. Fargason takes language to its limits to demonstrate how grief is given a voice. His speaker confronts illness, grapples with grief, and heals after loss in its most crushing forms. These poems attempt to make sense of trauma in a time of belligerent fathers and unacceptable answers. Fargason necessarily confronts toxic masculinity while navigating spiritual and emotional vulnerability.
A Note From the Publisher
From “Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara”:
The silence just before and just after,
and the black eyes as you leapt— "
no protest, no acceptance either.
You ran almost in unison,
a dance without music,
a curtain call,
and the crowd standing knowing this is what happens
once we find beauty:
we must watch it leave.
Advance Praise
“Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara navigates the ground between spiritual possession and emotional dispossession, between the promises of religion and the chokehold of prescribed masculinity in the duck hunting, strip-mall, suicidal South, mapping as they go our shared struggle toward intimacy, connection, sanity, and love. Laser-like focus, rich musicality, and an unflinching bravery in the face of a brutal familial and geographical history—these are the qualities that draw me to Fargason’s work and that make many of his poems so unforgettable.”—James Kimbrell, Florida State University
“Every sense engaged, each filament of intellect glowing, memory fully aflame—it’s not easy to survive such aliveness. So implies poet Fargason in this Love Song. Heights of awareness and passion and fullness are met by counterparts in depths of doubt and despair, of a past that ground down, that haunt writer and reader. This is a book of darkness and hope, of vision and rage. Reading Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara made me feel that I am not alone in the grief and fear of this world—I am part of it and it a part of me, but that also one (I, we, the poet, the reader) is integrally part of something larger: the project of life as something utterly worth living as deeply as possible, paths and pasts and pigs and pain and all.”—Brenda Shaughnessy, judge, Iowa Poetry Prize
“In Will Fargason’s first book, Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara, accelerating phrasal momentum and sharp figurative detail merge to put us in the prison made by child abuse and chronic pain. The narrow confines of such experience, its isolating effect, remind me of Elaine Scarry’s descriptions of torture. Fargason’s enactments of what’s happening to him and what has happened warp perception, as when he sees a lake as ‘a window I want to roll down.’ But he can’t. He’s trapped. Entrances and exits are repeatedly inverted, mirrors mirroring mirrors. The speed of the poems and their disarmingly sudden stops keep us off-guard, push us past what we think we know. About anything—pain, death, fear, anger. These poems wake their readers up. What else is poetry for?”—Elizabeth Arnold, author, Skeleton Coast
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781609387051 |
| PRICE | $19.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 96 |
Featured Reviews
Joseph S, Reviewer
Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara by William Fargason is the poet’s debut collection of poetry. Fargason is the winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. He received two awards from the Academy of American Poets, a scholarship to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a 2018-2019 Kingsbury Fellowship.
The poetry follows the life of the poet. The opening poems set the tone for the entire collection. The father is demanding in The Great Santini way; he pushes in that 1950s, be a man way. Boys are not supposed to say indoors and play on Gameboys or wear eye shadow and be Goths. The father’s life is touched upon and perhaps the incident that shaped his view of his child. The father’s presence forms a shadow on the child’s life. The poetry is well written as always with the Iowa Poetry Prize, but this collection has me falling through the cracks as an older reader. It is a theme for younger readers or at least those that do not fall into the Baby Boomer category. There is a definite gulf between generations, and it shines in this collection. Well worth examining.
Geoff U, Educator
Searing, beautiful, and emotionally gut-punching. These poems grapple with the poet's difficult upbringing (an angry, toxic father in a traditional Christian household); his anxiety and suicidality; and his attempts to form a healthy, loving relationship. Does a great job of juxtaposing specific minute moments and making them feel like universal truths, as in "Snowstorm, Mid-January":
"To keep the trains running in the snow, they lit the tracks on fire. The crew doused them in kerosene in order to repair the connections. After three days
of drinking, I wake up with a hangover that doesn't go away. I can imagine being on one of those trains, my future two lines of fire in front of me, the sizzle of snow
pocketed around the steel tracks."
Loved this collection and wish the best to Fargason as he wrestles with his demons using glorious words.
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