SOLD OUT: Amanda Montei's THE FAILURE AGE!

☆ Sorry, this item is SOLD OUT. ☆

April 2014
Limited-edition handmade chapbook
5.5 x 7 inches
34 pages
Inkjet and faux fur on 80lb magenta cover 
Natural white interior
Handsewn 4-hole binding in natural Irish linen

The free Ebook/PDF is now available online.


Prose poetry or flash fiction? Fairy tale or domestic romance? The 33 short sections of THE FAILURE AGE flip through the daily lives of the yearning-to-be-iconic Woman and her violin-eating Husband, with occasional interruptions by Mother. Subtle, sexy, and hilarious by turns. 
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He takes up peripatetic dialogues on the rug. She misses the violin, the sitar. “Let me spread something on you,” she says. She begs. “I have to remain active!” she says. “I have to use this body or it gets so loud!” She imagines she will attend yoga by moonlight one day, high on a skyscraper. In a spinal twist, the moon pressing patterns into her eyes, she will decide that meditative movement is the ultimate postmodern act, and will not be sure if she likes this revelation. She will not be sure about such groundlessness. “We’re here to shed our stories,” the teacher will say, a calm palm on her back. “We’re here to shed ideas.” (The night will creak like bad stairs. Nonplussed.) She will shed the idea that as a child she cried at the sight of ponytails. She will shed the idea that she was once a poor casual lover. She will shed the idea that she will ever understand what clouds are made of, and she will shed the idea that her head will never grow into itself, the way people say your feet do. She will shed the idea that the failure age is upon them, and then all the ideas will come rushing back.

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Poems in this chapbook have previously appeared, in slightly different forms, in Gigantic, Joyland, Explosion-Proof Magazine, PANK, and Delirious Hem.

Here is Divya Victor's review of the chapbook + an interview with Amanda at the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog: From Disney's Porn Vault...

Amanda Montei holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and is currently a PhD student at SUNY at Buffalo, where she is a Presidential Fellow. She is coeditor of Bon Aire Projects, and editor of the literary journal P-QUEUE. She is the co-author, with Jon Rutzmoser, of DINNER POEMS. Her novel Two Memoirs is forthcoming from Jaded Ibis in 2014.

THE FAILURE AGE is the second chapbook in the 2014 series from Bloof Books. Each chapbook in the series will be released in a limited edition of one hundred numbered copies, followed by a digital release.