Ganymede's Dog
A collection of prose poems that mingles tales from the classical past with contemporary sexuality and timeless dogs.
Description
Took all this time to actually in fact bite our own tail to learn that that hurts; I guess it was worth it. / Developed a taste for tails. The prose poems of Ganymede's Dog startle myths back to life, whether Ganymede's abduction by Zeus in the form of an eagle, his abduction by a century's worth of Budweiser labels, Sophocles's boozy boy-chasing, or the dancing plague of 1518. John Emil Vincent teases his materials into surreal, joyous, dirty, sometimes gruesome animation. His revelations arrive in the guise of other characters, and throughout, there are dogs. Dog-themed philosophy, dog-headed saints, dog-worshipping island rituals, and just plain dogs invite the reader to puppy-pile with Petronius, Catherine the Great, and Saint Christopher in a sapiosexual orgy with autocorrect handling the towels. Deeply infused with gay culture and mythology, Ganymede's Dog is a collection of smart, knowing, allusive, often ironic poems that ponder the boundaries of legend and the privileges of youth and beauty.
Reviews
"John Emil Vincent put my favorite things, all the things that matter, in something like a cosmic clothes dryer. Myth, history, rumor, rumor as myth as history as sex as rumor as proclamation as history as myth as myth as history as song as words—he spun them, heated them, folded them into order. And yes—dogs came—because dogs love clean laundry and dogs love what's elegantly made so that they can come with their paws and noses, tip it over, look at you." Lucy Corin, author of One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses
"A contemporary context coincides with a diverse cast of characters in these prose poems. Alongside Zeus's cohort, we bang heads with Pinocchio, Draco, and Santa Anna, to roll call but a few. This is not a writing against received versions of myth or history so much as it is subjecting them to an entirely new treatment." Arc Poetry Magazine