IN A JANUARY WOULD
by Lonely Christopher
Lonely Christopher dramatically ended a romantic relationship in Père Lachaise Cemetery on Christmas Day. This intense and trenchant verse series, written about the crisis from one January to the next, uses poetry as durational art. In a January Would tracks a heartbreak and the poet’s ensuing attempt at recovery over the course of a rough year, half of which he spent homeless.
Abandoned in an indolent, post-collegiate haze, searching for meaning but more often finding trouble, Christopher clarifies the perverse beauty of a brutal world—from the rooftops of Paris, to the gutters of Brooklyn, across the beaches of Fire Island, and even through the snowy Protestant woods of Connecticut. In a January Would navigates harsh social realities with style and rigor. The melodrama of time’s passage is on full display as Christopher parses themes of alienation, oppression, and cynicism in a journey through the four seasons. This unique break up book focuses the grief of lost love to develop complex emotional themes in a refreshing rococo style.
A generous, achingly gorgeous meditation on loss and loneliness, In a January Would invites readers to feel everything a person feels as his heart’s capacity is deepened by grief.
The title In a January Would feels like a medieval or Swinburnian delicacy, but what follows is rather full of contemporary vigor. The poem titles read as songs on an endless album. A legacy of modernism—the rigorous and angular attention to language that is also a queer inheritance—or rather the reckoning with it, persists through the texts. Always thinking of Duncan and H.D. and Wieners, Rimbaud and his boyfriend. These obdurate and opulent poems are as indestructible as the carvings on a tomb yet as transient as cloud writing. Lonely, “you make me feel like a picked zit that just won the Nobel Prize” and that’s a good thing. Thanks for being so brave for all of us who walk this funny path.
– Ana Božičević
In a January Would is a remarkable book. Lonely Christopher’s openness to language reminds me of the density, syntactical innovation, and aching love of Hart Crane’s “Voyages.” Lonely, too, lives “drenched in words” so that he can conjure them at the right moment and put them in the right form. One January in time becomes every January for all time. His attention is that arresting. And freeing—into queer multi-dimensionality. He is a garret poet working in the margins with such energy and compassion, spit and vinegar and with the finest literary ear I can gleefully ignore that there is anything but the margin.
– Stacy Szymaszek
About the author:
Lonely Christopher is the author of the poetry collections Death & Disaster Series and The Resignation. He also wrote the short story collection The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse and the novel THERE. His plays have been presented in Canada, China, and the United States. His film credits include several international shorts and the feature MOM, which he wrote and directed. He works for homeless queer youth and lives in Brooklyn with his partner Venn Daniel. Learn more at lonelychristopher.com.