Solar Trauma
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Description
“Everybody / should be throwing up all of the time,” insists Philip Sorenson’s incendiary and tender second collection Solar Trauma, a book that defies category in deference to the “uncontainableness of things.” Sorenson writes to expose classification’s errors and terminate endings: “to reject the premise that space is ever empty or divisible,” to “reject purity and elsewhereness.” Like the wails made by a handtrembling over the theremin, Solar Trauma’s musical forms and anxieties slide and swerve.
Unflinchingly fretful and frequently hilarious, these poems enumerate the radial, radical horrors the body can endure and inflict: “and when I cease // . . . // I become the body / from which I believe I already act // and split and split again / a dehiscence a thing a skin // essentially a constellation of threats.” This body of concern has no limit: think The Thing meets critical theory meets parenting meets polar devastation meets the internet; think of how to let anything go: “how can we get rid of this thing can we just throw it away what happens to it when // we do.”
Philip Sorenson teaches writing and literature in Chicago where he lives with his wife, Olivia Cronk, and their daughter. His poetry has appeared in Deluge, Pelt, and Horse Less Review, among others. His first book of poetry, Of Embodies, was published by Rescue Press in 2012.
Publication Date
2018
Publisher
Rescue Press
Keywords
Poetry, Creative Writing, Body, Space, Purity
Disciplines
Creative Writing | Poetry
Recommended Citation
Sorenson, Philip, "Solar Trauma" (2018). Faculty Books. 148.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/facultybooks/148
