Quicksand/ Stargazing by Remi Recchia

Quicksand/Stargazing by Remi Recchia
ISBN-13: 978-1943899-14-2
Paperback, 61 pages
First Edition, 2021
$15.00 + t/s/h

From the back of the book:

Remi Recchia’s poetry is both tender and darkly funny, deftly interspersing lines like “Did Christ/appraise his wounds for insurance?” along with “I don’t want/you to know we’re alone,/so let me be your star.” The poems in this book are intimate and personal, often chronicling and meditating on what life is like with a partner, that close bond like no other, while also exploring identity, gender, the aftermath of top surgery, exes, family, and navigating all of that in a complicated and ever changing world. This collection brought me joy reading it and just knowing it exists. I hope it does for all readers.
Joanna C. Valente, A Love Story

These poems engage with what it means to be an authentic human-animal: to be endangered and empowered at once, to be "harsh and golden and brave," to compassionately inhabit the complex space between the poles of this collection's title. Quicksand/Stargazing amazes me with its range of forms and shapes, all woven through with a voice that is ecstatic, urgent, tender, and unflinching. This voice insists that it is still possible to seriously, honestly, unironically believe in love. “I am not embarrassed by most things” proclaims Remi Recchia, and how lucky that makes the readers of this brilliant and necessary book.
F. Daniel Rzicznek, Nag Champa in the Rain

After four days in a tomb, the resurrected Lazarus must have known something about faith, transformation, and becoming a challenge to normative culture. In Quicksand/Stargazing, Remi Recchia offers up tender songs and precise guides to living and loving through the relentlessness of gender norms. Before using a public bathroom, "[t]ell your wife where you are, how long you’ll be. Take your phone with you." These poems remind us that the everyday is transformative--and that what's transformative is both sweet and perilous: "If I stood, I know I would rise / like a Lazarus in the heat of certainty."
K. Lorraine Graham, The Rest is Censored

Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. student in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. RemiRecchia.com

Enjoy an interview between Preston Smith and Remi Recchia at Fuzzable .

Jill Khoury interviews Remi Recchia at Rogue Agent.

Kristin LaFollette's review for Harbor Review.