Description
In The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer, Eric Tran contends with the aftermath of a close friend’s suicide while he simultaneously explores the complexities of being a gay man of color. At the intersection of queerness, loss, and desire, Tran uses current events, such as the Pulse nightclub tragedy, pop culture references, and comic book allusions to create a unique and textured poetry debut. He employs an unexpected pairing of prayer and fantasy allowing readers to imagine a world of queer joy and explore how grief can feel otherworldly.
“These poems, with their restless forms and lexicons, needle themselves through the psyche; they suture and sear, harboring speakers of myriad aftermaths. True to a physician’s gaze, Tran’s gaze, in its unflinching obsession with the renewal and failure of bodies—both tender and visceral—expose and heal at once. They hold large themes like grief, friendship, love, and inheritance against the luminous light of the mundane, declaring, with bold tenderness, that to keep the world we love well is to dismantle its hierarchies through language, and to live at the seat of feeling by embodying the possibilities of wonder. Bravo, Eric.”
—Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer by Eric Tran
