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Concerning the Dinner is the debut full-length poetry collection by Montana James Thomas, employing a theatrical sensibility and biting wit to navigate themes of consumption, violence, and pleasure. Oscillating between contemporary and archaic pastiche, Concerning the Dinner intertwines food and flesh, sex and brutality, absurdity and ache. Think tragicomedy in a blender-garnished with aspic and existential dread. Oysters are sucked, champagne flutes tremble, songbirds are shot dead and plucked bare.
Thomas is enamored with the excessive pleasures of the senses and simultaneously nauseated by the endless chase of them. Here, restraint is not a concern; decadent images are fed to the reader one heaping spoonful at a time. "Puppies also die," one poem reads, "and yet, they don't stoically reserve themselves like The New York Times recipe for Grilled Salmon with Mustard Glaze." In another, Thomas drools and weeps over a melt-in-your-mouth chicken dinner: "I will eat you and I will eat your children and then I will cry."
Somewhere between post-coital and post-meal, Concerning the Dinner remains in a constant state of arousing and exhausting the senses.
Savage and delicate, grotesque and gorgeous, horrific and hilarious, and tender even as it bares its teeth. This debut is an exploration of appetite in all its messy contradictions.
"In the Face of technological annihilation comes Montana James Thomas - a libidinal prophet to revive our senses. Dionysus would weep over Montana's compassion, sweetness, and baroque hedonism. Pure Electric Divinity." - Ruby McCollister
"I read Concerning the Dinner and ate Montana's consciousness. His poetry is a delightful and bitchy sensory mega-load. There's no mean streak... maybe just a bit of good ol'-fashioned violence, plus lots of joyus aromatics from Montana's psycho kitchen of a brain." - Meg Superstar Princess
"Montana is subversive, provocative, and infinitely creative."- Isabella Rossellini
