10-20
A01=John Belk
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Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_John Belk
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
coming of age
COP=United States
debut
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
identity
Language_English
masculinity
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
queer
small-town
softlaunch
wrestling
Product details
- ISBN 9781637680353
- Weight: 120g
- Dimensions: 153 x 215mm
- Publication Date: 18 Apr 2022
- Publisher: Autumn House Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Poems considering self, masculinity, and culture through the spectacle of professional wrestling.
In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods, the distance between spectacle and reality blurs.
Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus “Buff” Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us.
The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press’s Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.
In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods, the distance between spectacle and reality blurs.
Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus “Buff” Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us.
The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press’s Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.
John Belk is an associate professor of English at Southern Utah University and author of the chapbook The Weathering of Igneous Rockforms in High-Altitude Riparian Environments. His poems have appeared in the Maine Review, Jet Fuel Review, Sugar House Review, Salt Hill, Poetry South, Crab Orchard Review, and Sport Literate, among others. He has published articles in Rhetoric Review, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Composition Forum, and various anthologies. He lives in Cedar City, Utah.
