Overview

The 80th anniversary of the circus fire looms / like burnt smoke over water. Now you are // both the boy and the girl and the only one / left to tell this story. So begins this collection of flaming poems that illuminates sexual love and lights up the circus. Yannone gives each performer a sonnet in a corona that includes the wire walker, the clown, the human cannonball, the bandleader. Before you've finished reading this page-turner, which is both a jeremiad and a joy, you'll even hear from the arsonist, himself, who intones, There is nothing on Earth I wouldn't want / To watch burn. -Lillo Way, Flying: Trapeze Poems An erotic circus of the glittering, gaudy, and heartbreaking, Fire at the Big Top is nothing short of electrifying. Yannone has crafted a subversive world of queer performance and expression, where poems are crowns, matches, acrobats, clowns, knives, and rings and their leaping movements unfurl like colorful scarves or flaming swords. The most intricate magic trick, this collection shows us how sex and love can turn the mundane into illusion and spectacle. -Ansley Clark, Bloodline Fire at the Big Top is a waxed-paraffin blaze of a read! A story of darling dare, wire walking, and combustion. A frenzy of love, destruction and tragedy in circus proportions. -Catherine Ronan, Elemental Skin

Full Product Details

9781970256123

Table of Contents

Reviews

The 80th anniversary of the circus fire looms / like burnt smoke over water. Now you are // both the boy and the girl and the only one / left to tell this story. So begins this collection of flaming poems that illuminates sexual love and lights up the circus. Yannone gives each performer a sonnet in a corona that includes the wire walker, the clown, the human cannonball, the bandleader. Before you've finished reading this page-turner, which is both a jeremiad and a joy, you'll even hear from the arsonist, himself, who intones, There is nothing on Earth I wouldn't want / To watch burn. -Lillo Way, Flying: Trapeze Poems An erotic circus of the glittering, gaudy, and heartbreaking, Fire at the Big Top is nothing short of electrifying. Yannone has crafted a subversive world of queer performance and expression, where poems are crowns, matches, acrobats, clowns, knives, and rings and their leaping movements unfurl like colorful scarves or flaming swords. The most intricate magic trick, this collection shows us how sex and love can turn the mundane into illusion and spectacle. -Ansley Clark, Bloodline Fire at the Big Top is a waxed-paraffin blaze of a read! A story of darling dare, wire walking, and combustion. A frenzy of love, destruction and tragedy in circus proportions. -Catherine Ronan, Elemental Skin

Author Information

Sandra Yannone (she/they) lives bicoastally in Washington state and Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where she serves as poet laureate. In 2027, she will assume responsibilities as Managing Editor of Connecticut River Review. Salmon Poetry published The Glass Studio (2024) and her debut collection, Boats for Women (2019). She is co-editor of Unsinkable: Poems Inspired by the Titanic (Salmon 2026) and series editor for Seven Kitchens Press's A.V. Christie Chapbook Series (women poets over fifty). She serves on the board of the Olympia Poetry Network and on the advisory committee for Poetry by the Sea. Her poetry and book reviews appear internationally in print and online in Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, SWWIM Every Day, Skylight 47, Prairie Schooner, Booth, CALYX, Lavender Review, Women's Review of Books, and The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, among countless others. Her work has received an AWP's Intro Journals Project award and anAcademy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize as well as multiple nominations for the Pushcart and Best ofthe Net awards. In March 2020, she co-founded and continues to host the international, intersectional, intergenerational online readingseries Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry. She also co-hosts Last Tuesdays with Sandy and Thomas for the Olympia Poetry Network and West-East Bicoastal Poets and Beyond online bimonthly. From 2020-2021, she hosted Headmistress Press's The Collectibles. Headmistress Press honored Yannone as card #85 in its Lesbian Poets Trading Cards series. Yannone holds undergraduate, master's, and doctorate degrees in poetry from Wheaton College (Mass.), Emerson College, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, respectively. In 2023, she retired from her career as Faculty Writing Center Director at The Evergreen State College to devote herself fulltime to poetry endeavors known and unknown to her. Visit her at www.sandrayannone.com to inquire about possibilities.

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