Hot with the Bad Things

by Lucia LoTempio

Overview

These poems take a closer look at violence against women, both physical and psychological. Follow the intersection of fear, identity, and the malleability of the speaker’s own experiences of violence enacted on her by men, particularly a past partner. Imagistic and evocative, the poems ask how are we conditioned into living with violence, and how do we move forward?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948579094
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Lucia LoTempio is the author of Hot with the Bad Things, forthcoming from Alice James Books in May 2020. Lucia hails from Buffalo, NY and left to earn an MFA in poetry at the University of Pittsburgh. You can find her poems in Passages North, The Journal, TYPO, Quarterly West, as part of the Academy of American Poets poem-a-day series, and elsewhere. With Suzannah Russ Spaar, she co-authored the chapbook Undone in Scarlet (Tammy 2019). Lucia is still in Pittsburgh, where she works at the literary nonprofit City of Asylum.

Editorial Reviews

03/16/2020

“Hiding behind the poem is always another poem. And in that one, less blood,” LoTiempo posits at the beginning of her investigative debut that questions love, abuse, and memory with a light but deadly-serious touch. Set largely in an upstate New York college town where lives overlap and stories travel quickly, LoTiempo’s poems enact a candid confessionalism as they address her rapist, a woman murdered by a lover, gendered violence, and the public reactions to these events. The nuanced lyric speaker speaks in short prosaic sections, while lineated poems communicate fractured distress. Other short poems repurpose social media posts, and invented epistolaries read like dispatches from a town forever changed by violence. Throughout, the poet remains self-aware and considers the suffering of others: “As if I can play this mirror game. As if she could light through me. As if I am at the quiet swirling center”; “In the bad dream I’m not her but I am watching./ In the bad dream why am I watching.” LoTempio poignantly and directly relays her experiences of trauma, providing an affecting example of how to write about violence, witness, and memory. (May)

Publishers Weekly