Swivelmount

Poems to read in the small hours before dawn, when the sirens start up again.

Swivelmount’s concerns – the collapse of subject and world, eros and law, knowledge and bafflement – gain new urgency as Babstock fiercely reimagines and reassembles the remnants into a viable order. At the core of their kinetic imagery is a freefall into mourning, but also a faith in others: a Babstock poem is the voice next to you in the ER waiting room, becalmed, compassionate, darkly humorous. This is Babstock at his best.

“I love the ease with which these poems overturn and half-describe things, out-doing industry with their mouthloads … Also when the global romantic registers a crack in the globe – Babstock does this on a dime, and often. The crack of course is the revelation (I don't think he would like the use of this word, or 'global romantic' for that matter), but it’s what all his weird geography always leads to … Swivelmount has come out from under something dark and brittle (see On Malice) to dance with a literally sick world. Or maybe not dance, but dazzle and hold.” —Dan Bejar, Destroyer

“To experience his poetry is to feel, suddenly, while falling from a high place, a firm hand on the scruff of your neck. Startling, pain-filled, life-saving.” —Miriam Toews

“I have never read anything quite like Swivelmount. The poems in this book are lapidary yet expansive. They are highly polished yet quirky, erudite – drawing on art, biology, geology, and history – yet utterly unpretentious, impersonal and then, suddenly, personal after all. As Babstock puts it, ‘… I’m never/sure if it’s agency/or deep structure that wants/what it wants.’ In other words, this work is delightfully resistant to categorization. Babstock is an original.” —Rae Armantrout