MAMMAL
by Richard Loranger
Mammal is the latest collection of poetry and flash prose from legendary Bay Area rebel Richard Loranger. The book is grounded in a poetics of reexamination and the consistent questioning of the nature of most everything. Starting with a delve into the poet’s experience of fluid gender, identity, and self, the work expands to explore protean perspectives of culture, institutions, sex, relationships, self-reflection, and American life, carried by a distinctive and gleeful language-play and stylistics that push the boundaries of connotation and embrace a plurality of meaning.
Mammal posits new ways of understanding ourselves in relationship to our own minds, others, and the natural world. Ever the juicy provocateur, Loranger challenges the reader to consider that “you’re not really you” and that the “I” might be “a mirrored room / we build around ourselves without a door.” This presents a unique nonbinary and trans* transgressive intransigence, exploding thresholds through a hybridized continuum of approaches, inflected with post-Beat neoformalism, spoken word cadences, queer disruption, conceptual audacity, and raucous experimentation.
Loranger construes radical new perspectives on posthumanism. Behold the “stark hubris of the poor enamored beast / flailing its way through the veldt of itself / as if the skin were true.” Interrogating “the id of it all,” we’re upbraided: “Don’t tell me what I am. You’re wrong.” In these pages, conventional conceptions of gender and sexuality melt like ice cream on a hot day as “we slide like pudding into history.” Discover Richard Loranger for yourself with Mammal!
People are Saying:
Hey ho! Yo hey! Exuberant, surprising, with a wondrous juggle of words, Mammal is also compassionate and often deeply touching. Richard Loranger has written a beast of a book—a ground-shifting, prance-twisting, song-filled, and yes, friendly beast. Take a deep breath, hold on, and join the dance. Ho hey!
—Jane Ormerod, artist, author of Welcome to the Museum of Cattle and Recreational Vehicles on Fire, founding editor at great weather for MEDIA
A timely gift to us, Homo Sapiens, when our overall identity seems to be blurred & lost. Written in direct & humble language & with the most personal & natural breath, Mammal is a lullaby, a hymn, & a whimsical gospel of our time. It mirrors us with a clear reflection of who we are to wake us up to the vital sense & sentiments of the origin of our species.
—Yuko Otomo, visual artist and author
I avidly look forward to each new Richard Loranger book. They have a very distinctive poetic voice, and it is on full view in Mammal. Equally persuasive on the subject of butterflies, pronouns, or insomnia, Loranger takes us all on a wild ride through levels of understanding. "As long as we think we’re our bodies / we’re fucked," Richard offers, and it would be ungrateful to disagree.
—Kim Shuck, 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco Emerita
About the Author:
Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer, performer, musician, and visual artist who has been working around the United States for over forty years. They have lived in many parts of the country, including New York, Austin, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Chicago, and San Francisco, and currently live and work in Oakland, CA. They are the author of Mammal, Unit of Agency, Be A Bough Tit, Sudden Windows, Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and ten chapbooks, and have writing in over 100 magazines and journals. You can find more about their work and scandals at their website: www.richardloranger.com.