“during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present”

I read Brandon Scott Gorrell’s book of poems, during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present, last night. I had previously seen other work by Brandon on the internet, but this was my first time reading the whole book. I found it to be ‘incredible,’ ‘honest,’ sad, highly ‘poetic,’ and ‘sublime.’ Not to mention very cohesive and commanding as a complete work. The book charts the emotional journey from birth—the birth of poem titles, of poems—through anxiety, sadness, loneliness, love, and despair, to acceptance. In its voice, its extremely creative, at times science-fiction-fueled vision, its relentlessness, and in the beauty of its moments, Brandon’s book captures one young man and so many young men in a way that I found, at 3 in the morning, alone in my apartment, almost ‘overwhelming.’ There is palpable intelligence and the saddest love radiating from this book. Cheers, Brandon.

Some of my favorite lines:

“i want to turn into wild grass and get eaten by a soft moose”
“if i could get all the text messages and emails that i will
receive during my life right now there would be no more
questions and i could move on”
“i would have rather flown into outer space with you/stared into a telescope with you next to me/or committed suicide together/or something”
“i said i am sending you a song and we will feel closer/you said can this song play when we meet”
“i feel like a tired robot/on my way to the store i thought about you/i thought about everyone/i feel like a dead echinacea flower”

Brandon will have “four small poems” in the first issue of the magazine Pop Serial.