Sweetgum & Lightning
Rodney Terich Leonard
Featured in Lambda Literary’s February’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books List
Featured in Library Journal‘s “Books and Authors To Know: Poetry Titles To Watch 2021”
Featured in the Southern Review of Books‘ “The Best Southern Books of February 2021”
Reviewed in the Alabama Writers’ Forum
Sweetgum & Lightning lets us into an extraordinary poetic universe, shaped by a vernacular rooted in the language of self, one’s origins, and music. In poems that are deeply sensual in nature, Rodney Terich Leonard considers gender and sexuality, art, poverty, and community. Imagery expands through unexpected lexical associations and rumination on the function of language; words take on new meaning and specificity, and the music of language becomes tantamount to the denotations of words themselves. Through extensive webs of connotation, Leonard’s narratives achieve a sense of accuracy and intimacy. The nuanced lens of these poems is indicative of the honesty of expression at work in the collection—one that affirms the essentiality of perception to living and memory.
“Lunch Menu: Summer 1977”
Spam
ribbon cane
popcorn & hot sauce
cucumbers & dill pickles
side-of-the-road picked plums
knife-sliced fried potatoes
boiled peanuts
mayonnaise & ketchup sandwiches
white rice w/ salt, pepper & butter
Vienna Sausage & Saltine crackers
frozen sugar-sweetened white milk
baked store-stolen yams