Twang

Up close, it sounded like the men when they finished, their faith, jostling what they didn't understand against what they secretly wished, writes poet Ben Kline in his unflinching new book Twang, a must have collection that bristles with holler talk,
hay fields, double-wides, Styrofoam coolers of beer, Satan, Madonna and the fervor of kissing boys and no name men by the lake. A place where gay demons [bring] ruin to what upstanding citizens call decency, though a $50 dollar donation to the church can go a long way in saving a soul from eternal damnation. Kline brings gristle, gut and bone, giving voice to what it means to grow up deeply rural, Appalachian and queer, busting open every stereotype along the way. -Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate, Author of Dirt Songs

With language lush as Whitman's and a cadence that twirls between Madonna and creation epics, Ben Kline's "Twang" breathes life into Appalachia in ways we have never witnessed before. Tender, bucolic, celestial, erotic, queer-Kline's poems
are a tractor bucking, a lover's touch in the dark, witchcraft wrought from honey and river baptisms, uncles dissolving like the Eucharist. Brilliant and immense, "Twang" is a true literary feat. "Don't they know / my dirt tongue / sops the blood
/ off their faces?" -Todd Dillard, author of Ways We Vanish and Ragnarök at the Father-Daughter
Dance