“His sense of sincerity, of awe, his capacity to plant a small seed in a poem, then to watch the fruit bloom across the page. And the path he takes—patient as a cloud—to the truth, to this stunning succession of last lines…no one else sounds like Karl Michael Iglesias. No other book is like THE BOUNCE.”
–Jon Sands, author of It’s Not Magic
“Karl Michael Iglesias’s The Bounce is a spell of book, teeming with candor, extending towards us a genuine tendering and reckoning of what has been given to us, how we could find a beginning among ourselves in the aching geographies of diaspora, even at the site of breakage. “All of our guests are a field of families we have gathered / as flowers,” he writes. “The altar is where we meet.” Iglesias’s work anchors us, readers, through early motions and the longing of tomorrow. A remarkable collection.”
–Ricardo Maldonado author of The Life Assignment
In Karl Michael Iglesias’ excellent new book THE BOUNCE, the past and future are in constant conversation, as the poet tackles grief, penance, and the entanglements and redemptions of family and lineage. Tender parts still good, Iglesias writes, Some glass breaks so/small it needs/to be swept. THE BOUNCE is steadfast in its willingness to sit with the small, aching parts of the self. A truly gorgeous chapbook on the ways we show up for one another, in all the ferocious, overflowing costumes of love.
–Hala Alyan author of The Moon That Turns You Back
The Bounce is so alive with memory, play, hope, and love as Karl Michael Iglesias pulls wonder from scenes of childhood and domestic life. I love these poems; they make me want to call my cousins, write letters to past and future loves. These poems shimmer with truth (Maybe true love is just who you’ve decided to forgive/for the rest of your life) and secrets (I know/where the hole in the hallway/comes from) and in the end add up to something utterly real, pulsing, and so very well-written. This document of relationships becomes, in the poet’s hands, a testimony of the mountains and valleys of love’s opulent and familiar terrain.
–Danez Smith, author of HOMIE
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