Farm Alarm: Poems

In a world as terrifying as Plath’s and as mistake-ridden as Curly Howard’s, a world trapped in its Gothic, Southern O’Connor-esque box, Gay picks through the wreckage of the years with gritty idiomatic narrative, and sardonic lyric. The key word in this one-step-forward-and-two-steps-back little pamphlet of darkness is “alarm”. Yet eventually, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is a platitude that rings true. The poems slog through farm tragedies, grueling football practice, pr...