From Publishers Weekly
Full of raw energy, up-to-date in its slang and its jump cuts, effervescent with the playfulness and sometimes the angers of youth, the third collection from Lemon (Hallelujah Blackout) conveys a likable, outsized personality; it should also work well in tandem with the Texas-based poet's forthcoming memoir, Happy (Scribner, 2010), which describes his fast descent and striking recovery, as a young adult, from shocking and sudden brain injury. Saying yes to everything/ Does not mean you need// To grunt at each person/ Who says hello: so begins a poem called We Could Boom Boom, sounding at once a joke and a warning. Let me be your guiding fright, your/ Highway to the comfort zone, another poem requests; around that invitation Lemon arranges both a love poem and a depiction of suicide. Champions will praise the verve that lets the poet imagine himself In the presence/ Of dynamite./ Deserving of/ Everything. The strikingly terse sequence entitled only !! makes a welcome, if sometimes frightening, change of pace. It also alludes, apparently, to his brain injury: The fun park inside (that is, inside his skull) Is being/ Renovated.// Bellwether./ Blackened eyes. But such gravities are exceptions: delights, and shocks, are the rule. Like Tony Hoagland, Lemon is often self-conscious about the volatilities his poems convey, about their almost giddy tonalities, but he will not apologize for himself: adult life is a scary gift, a fast trip, a set of close encounters with this fizzing pier life. (Mar.)
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Review
"A master of negative empathy, Lemon spelunks through the brain's darker convolutions and clearly enjoys testing the reader's limits.
Library Journal, starred review
"Full of raw energy, up-to-date in its slang and its jump cuts, effervescent with the playfulness and sometimes the angers of youth, the third collection from Lemon conveys a likable, outsized personality." Publishers Weekly
"Life cleverly and joyfully rages in Alex Lemon's poems."Major Jackson
"Alex Lemon dazzles us with his ability to slice straight through nerve and marrow on his way to the heart and mind of the matter."Tracy K. Smith
"Fancy Beasts is a terrific book by one of the best younger poets at work today."Kevin Prufer
"This book will likely appeal most to twenty-somethings with an emo/hipster bent, but even older readers will be impressed by Lemon’s calculated audacity."Library Journal (starred review)
"Full of raw energy, up-to-date in its slang and its jump cuts, effervescent with the playfulness and sometimes the angers of youth, the third collection from Lemon (Hallelujah Blackout) conveys a likable, outsized personality; it should also work well in tandem with the Texas-based poet's forthcoming memoir, Happy (Scribner, 2010). Like Tony Hoagland, Lemon is often self-conscious about the volatilities his poems convey, about their almost giddy tonalities, but he will not apologize for himself: adult life is a scary gift, a fast trip, a set of close encounters with 'this fizzing pier life.'"Publishers Weekly
