Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Auto/Body
    Auto/Body
    Auto/Body
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    Auto/Body

    By Vickie Vértiz

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The poems in Auto/Body are an inexhaustible engine—sometimes a body, sometimes flesh—a sensual exploration of what it means to repair, to remake, to keep going even when rebuilding feels impossible.

    From the greased-up engines of auto body shops to the innumerable points of light striking the dance floor of a queer nightclub, Auto/Body, winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, connects the vulnerability of the narrating queer body to the language of auto mechanics to reveal their shared decadence.

    Behind the wheel of this book is an insistent, humorous voice whose experiences have lent themselves to a deep, intimate knowledge of survival, driven by the pursuit of joy and exalted pleasure. Raised in and near auto body shops, Vickie Vértiz remembers visiting them to elevate the family car to examine what’s underneath, to see what’s working and what’s not. The poetry in this book is also a body shop, but instead we take our bodies, identities, desires, and see what’s firing. In this shop we ask: What needs changing? How do our bodies transcend ways of being we have received so that we may become more ourselves?

    From odes to drag, to pushing back on the tyranny of patriarchy, to loving too hard and too queer, to growing up working-class in a time of incessant border violence and incarceration, this collection combusts with blood and fuel. In other words, Vértiz writes to dissolve a colonial engine and reconstruct a new vessel with its remains.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Notre Dame Press
    Release dateFeb 1, 2023
    ISBN9780268203948
    Auto/Body
    Author

    Vickie Vértiz

    Vickie Vértiz is an award-winning Mexican American poet, writer, and professor whose work has appeared in the New York Times magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her book Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut won the 2018 PEN America literary prize in poetry. A graduate of Williams College, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of California, Riverside, she teaches in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara.

    Related to Auto/Body

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      Moon river, swollen river, river of starholeand bright, harness river, lichen river,river we velvet with our filth.River of butter and river of witches, rivercracked open careful like egg, or burstapart, unleashing its violet load.River mouths, river

      2 min read

    • Article

      All The Gay Saints

      May 1, 2020

      All The Gay Saints
      4 min read

    • Article

      Follow Them

      Nov 1, 2021

      Heartbroken over a football game, Autumnevening, of this kind of thing I’m not ashamednor of the twistiness of that diction,or wanting America to burnthough only certain parts deserve it,its forests are beautiful and have donenothing wrong, even the

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Rails

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Rails
      1 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      What is the uncanny valley? asks the student and I draw the graph on the board, and point to the lowest point, and then move up the slope; This is like a scarecrow, it’s kinda shaped like a human but you’re not sure; This is where you’d put a mannequ

      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2023

      Let’s be GodFor a moment, Shall we?That which invites Composition,That which is suspended From a great height,The presence Of approximationHeavy in the meadows, I’m not afraid,And yet My shroud vanishesIn these lines, I am so weptPast weeping, And wh

      1 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      She was a security guard and even though her uniform was black I could seeIt was covered in blood, the marble floor was covered in blood, it wasSlowly pooling out from the space where HER HAND used to beOh my god, I said, then I started to say, YOUR

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      May 1, 2023

      At the end of the world, I sat in the dark waiting for you,but you didn’t come. You didn’t save me. At the end we are always alone, candles slowlyburning out, losing the flame for lack of oxygen. You didn’t tell me it would be like this. All of itcam

      2 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • Article

      Body Language

      Aug 14, 2019

      Body Language
      5 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: September 2017

      Sep 11, 2017

      Isn’t that one of the purest goals of poetry—to justify our breaths? To recognize that we matter? The post Must-Read Poetry: September 2017 appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Specificity of Art

      Oct 10, 2022

      Like most writers, Jill Madden Melchoir has been putting pen to paper for as long as she can remember. But perhaps unlike most writers, Melchoir’s writing didn’t start with stories or poems: “It was writing lists of stuff I liked, literally just list

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Living Days

      Nov 4, 2019

      The Living Days
      9 min read

    • Article

      After Kaddish

      Sep 27, 2018

      After Kaddish
      9 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2023

      And god created the waves and we the graves beneath, bodies madeparticulate by the force of water against water, water against rock, againsttime. I descend into the deep in a kind of prayer, listen to its centuries.Make me pay, will you, make me hurt

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      i look like someonehealing from an accidentbecause i am someonehealing from an accidentthe book of actsscales falling from saul’s eyesremembering my capacityfor stillnesshow long can i sitwithout looking awaythe fear of god escapingi desperately need

      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Nov 1, 2019

      Four Poems
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Auto/Body

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Auto/Body - Vickie Vértiz

      dbook_preview_excerpt.htmluWˎZ @0@%8E.ٚfՏ]#w$1li1a]r5cqE .  $Pɼ]G_vp ற|p6 ig](K VB>P,(E0hB MK@UT:6$jNiP׉ NOE@%sEgwA+dtQ3W@4&Z" O Vf7ƒU"(.f;{!u{tP\xgok颟f-/*E.ػԻ+ V3AZqP/׿ ġPVZl/uqB[wJϴd;#وZP ʞi3bVcdhJA;3V-=JFFXFk/j w} D2Ln/f t{ f;HʵT=3a+=nG#f 7!Yc/Q4#WL|Fւ &bki5}{$&py5ʊy'4 WEG}>՝/y_aPLؘ<y Fw:L+A2["K
      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1