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A review by chaseledin
Begging for It by Alex Dimitrov
4.0
A friend, a professor of poetry, recommended Alex Dimitrov's Begging for It (2013) for its exquisite attention to pleasure: particularly Dimitrov's sensualist techniques.
Begging for It is a larger collection of Dimitrov's poems published widely in well-known journals, including the American Poetry Review, the Boston Review, the Gay & Lesbian Review, and The Yale Review, among numerous others. Dimitrov's work is widely influenced by classical poetics and literature, which is reflected in many of his titles (e.g. "Self-Portrait as Brett in The Sun Also Rises"), and sympathizes with Wilde, Ginsburg, and Borges.
The collection is split into five sections, delineations of which aren't necessarily clear, but provide a comforting movement from youth to an infinite loss-of-self in sex and desire. Though many of the poems felt tangentially related, the start and ending, especially, progressed the collection from youth into a sort of "loss of innocence," though the author would never admit to this. By far, my favorite, "Night Flights," reveals Dimitrov's skilled preoccupation with image and movement. Others, including "Sensualism," "White Fire," "Red Desert," and "Darling," stood out as exceptionally independent, thoughtful, and suggestive improvements upon the modern preponderance of viseral attraction.
Begging for It receives four stars for its sheer originality, its commitment to creative thought, and its intoxicating imagery. Alas, the author tried even a bit too hard to incorporate a number of poems (in section three, specifically) that detracted from the collection's intentions. Nonetheless, Dimitrov deserves the praise he's received, as, for instance, Mark Doty writes: "Dimitrov's passionate, headlong poems seem to want to carve beneath the surface of gestures, beneath the skin, to the warm and dangerous blood beneath"; indeed, "[This] is a fierce and memorable debut."
Begging for It is a larger collection of Dimitrov's poems published widely in well-known journals, including the American Poetry Review, the Boston Review, the Gay & Lesbian Review, and The Yale Review, among numerous others. Dimitrov's work is widely influenced by classical poetics and literature, which is reflected in many of his titles (e.g. "Self-Portrait as Brett in The Sun Also Rises"), and sympathizes with Wilde, Ginsburg, and Borges.
The collection is split into five sections, delineations of which aren't necessarily clear, but provide a comforting movement from youth to an infinite loss-of-self in sex and desire. Though many of the poems felt tangentially related, the start and ending, especially, progressed the collection from youth into a sort of "loss of innocence," though the author would never admit to this. By far, my favorite, "Night Flights," reveals Dimitrov's skilled preoccupation with image and movement. Others, including "Sensualism," "White Fire," "Red Desert," and "Darling," stood out as exceptionally independent, thoughtful, and suggestive improvements upon the modern preponderance of viseral attraction.
Begging for It receives four stars for its sheer originality, its commitment to creative thought, and its intoxicating imagery. Alas, the author tried even a bit too hard to incorporate a number of poems (in section three, specifically) that detracted from the collection's intentions. Nonetheless, Dimitrov deserves the praise he's received, as, for instance, Mark Doty writes: "Dimitrov's passionate, headlong poems seem to want to carve beneath the surface of gestures, beneath the skin, to the warm and dangerous blood beneath"; indeed, "[This] is a fierce and memorable debut."