Ecstasy

**'Ecstasy stands out for its brutal examination of the transience of Eros ... Campy and fun' Guardian In Ecstasy, Alex Dimitrov embraces a life on the edge in New York and the finely wrought poetry that can come out of it.** He explores sex, drugs, parties, pleasure, and God in the 2020s, and looks back to a coming-of-age in the 1990s that still informs who his generation is and will be. His unabashed and drivingly musical poems are a call against repression, a rebuke of cultural norms and shame, and a celebration of human authenticity – even if to live under such philosophies is dangerous. In ‘Today I Love Being Alive’, we find the poet naked in his kitchen, eating a banana and obsessed with a new lover, declaring ‘I don't care about being remembered. / I care about . . . Strong men. Beautiful sentences. Italian leather’; in ‘Poppers’, he stands lightheaded in the bathroom at a bar, ‘thinking of what to do / with the rest of my life’, and issuing a warning to himself and us: ‘Poetry / is not a self-help book.’ Dimitrov is an iconographer of contemporary life, able to pin profound and timeless meaning to a fleeting encounter in the street. Ecstasy also engages with the poet’s Christian upbringing, interrogating faith as both an enemy and valve of catharsis, and a bedfellow of what this book celebrates and courts: profound human ecstasy. 'A rollicking paean to pleasure, an ode to realness and resilience ... Raw and honest and deeply personal' New York Times **'Dimitrov is that rarest of creatures, a true poet and a truly contemporary poet. Thank god he's here' Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours *A most anticipated queer book for Spring 2025 in Electric Literature***