Aimee Herman – meant to wake up feeling
great weather for MEDIA is thrilled to announce the publication of meant to wake up feeling by Aimee Herman.
Aimee Herman’s powerful new collection, meant to wake up feeling, addresses the complexities of identity, gender, memory, and body image. This is a book of surprise, humor, intimacy, fallibility, renewal. A treasure map of metamorphosis. Anne Waldman writes, “Visceral, insistent, beyond transgressive…Gratitude to Aimee Herman for getting under our skin, and moving poetry-in-discourse into the feminist present and future where we study and yearn for the salvation of humanity.” Herman’s work takes you on a personal journey of understanding a body’s identity and, in turn, helps us understand who we are. These poems revel in Cummings’ forms, Bukowski directness, and Kerouacian playfulness. For a generation set on defining itself, this book is a step in the right direction of realizing the only definition is ourselves. In Herman’s own words, “Walk away from formula, resuscitate the dark inside, look for new bulb of light.”
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PRAISE FOR MEANT TO WAKE UP FEELING
Visceral, insistent, beyond transgressive, meant to wake up feeling does just that. It is a palpable writing of the body in Helene Cixious’s demanding and powerful sense of the act. Gratitude to Aimee Herman for getting under our skin, and moving poetry-in-discourse into the feminist present and future where we study and yearn for the salvation of humanity. —Anne Waldman, author of “Gossamurmur” and “The Iovis Trilogy”
meant to wake up feeling is an extraordinary book and Aimee Herman is a major talent. She mixes and remixes, configures and reconfigures language inventing new language and visual art. She says, “Do not live just because you can.” meant to wake up feeling is a series of individuals: an epic poem, a sexy political queer song about the body definition/redefinition relationship, diS-ease and transcendence. —Pamela Sneed, author of “Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery” and “KONG and Other Works”
Aimee Herman speaks to her and all generations past and present with these strong transcendent poems and ever-pressing issues. As Herman puts it “i am in-between the sentence structures of my body.” A body of work, which I kept embracing as I fell in between these fragmenting lines of poetic thought. Always questioning, Herman asks: “if you steam open the body / will you find what was really there?” and answers “alphabetized psychosis.” I say yes and perhaps a bit of uneasy (dis)comfort as well. To misquote Herman: Dear Aimee, every time I turn these pages I believe in you even more. Keep these transmissions coming.—Steve Dalachinsky, author of the PEN Oakland National Book Award winner “The Final Nite”
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Aimee Herman continues her profound, unflinching explorations of love, violence, and the physical body in poems that are exquisitely crafted, dangerous and thrilling. meant to wake up feeling definitely lives up to its name. —Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters” and “Toxicology”
Aimee Herman 