CRUSHING IT reviewed in On the Seawall

V. Joshua Adams’ review of CRUSHING IT in Ron Slate’s* On the Seawall is brilliant, and I'm not just saying that because it's my book. Oh who am I kidding?! I totally am!

My favorite bit: "Knox’s poetry performs this embarrassment of the abject in a spectacular way, while also grounding her performance in the particulars of what one might be embarrassed about.. Think Sharon Olds on psychedelics.”

Crushing It and the word “abject” in the same review??!?! [Cue gameshow winner music] Finally!!!!

I‘ve been abjecting my head off all my life, but I just recently learned the term (specifically “burlesque abjection”) reading Barbara Ching’s book, Wrong's What I Do Best: Hard Country Music and Contemporary Culture. It’s the “Folks, I’m SO screwed it’s ridonkulous!” engine that powered country classics such as Lyle Lovett’s “I Married Her (Just Because She Looks Like You),” George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” Hank Williams’ “Nobody's Lonesome for Me,” and the Austin Lounge Lizards, “Paint Me on Velvet.” I’ve since seen it described as “reflexive sadomasochism.”

Ching reminds us that Dolly and Kitty and Loretta* never strapped on burlesque abjection pants. Apparently people don’t like to watch women abjecting burlesquely. But I do! I’ve memorized most of the pre-Connecticut I Love Lucy episodes and would happily watch a loop of Melissa McCarthy tumbling off a puffy lavender divan for hours.

*If you’re thinking, “What about Minnie Pearl?” you’re brilliant, too! But Minnie’s shtick was very upbeat and sproingy. More “Keep on the Sunny Side on Life” than “Act Naturally.”

When I started writing, I never felt like a Poet, because Poets, I believed, were special people who wrote eloquent musings that translated the janky feelings of mumbling mortals like me into baby-butt smooth sonnets and sestinas. Writing in voice was my IN to poetry, and most of those voices began, and still begin, in abjection.

P.S. Thank you, Ron and V!