Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Stephanie Lenox's inventive debut collection CONGRESS OF STRANGE PEOPLE entices readers into a federation of freaks with voice-driven poems that sing a collective ode to our common strangeness. Employing humor, mystery, and a bold yet generous gaze, this book keeps company with a snake handler and conspiracy theorist, record-holders from The Guinness Book, Miss Manners, human cannonballs, Nancy Drew, and other characters from a family of outcasts.
To write so thoughtfully, humorously, zanily, and beautifully about dogs and cats, remorseful sisters and fumbling fathers, crazy record-holders and sexy snake charmers--every body and thing around us--is to live poetry. Lenox's life is animated into a colorful, deeply felt spectrum of discovery that spans 'a suspension bridge of disbelief' that we willingly believe and dive from, risking that splitting heart of fear and joy. A smart, surprising, and audacious book.--Henry Hughes, author of Moist Meridian
Stephanie Lenox's work mines the Guinness World Records to take metaphor to a sublime extreme. Peopled with its 'federation of freaks, ' her book is euphoric, generous, gracefully obsessive. There is intense personal depth in all of these poems, which are intimate, skillful, shimmering with complexity and awe.--Denise Duhamel, author of Ka-Ching!
To enter this startling book, CONGRESS OF STRANGE PEOPLE, is to take an uneasy journey through the maze of mirrors, 'the other garden / our odd Eden, a tabula rasa of ludicrous acts': each encounter is arresting, disarming, sometimes grotesque, but always curiously familiar. These poems shed dazzling light upon human behavior and anomaly in order to teach us to accept, indeed love, the freaks and monsters stirring within. What a graceful, poetic gesture: Look, Stephanie Lenox tells us, 'that's how beautiful things get made.'--Rigoberto González, author of Black Blossoms
Stephanie Lenox's poetry is so entertaining, captivating, inspiring, and delightful. Reading her work is like watching a brilliant trapeze artist. The daring young lady dazzles her audience with her skill, humor, and philosophy--flying through the air of imagination and creativity with the greatest of ease! I thoroughly enjoyed her performance and find it hard to come back down to earth!--Ashrita Furman, official record-holder for holding most current Guinness World Records
