LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET details meditations on ephemeral love, memory, and the purpose of art and storytelling.
"In his scintillating debut, MJ Gomez weighs love against grief, grief against god, and asks: which governs what? Replete with sensuous pauses and lush imagery, LOVE LETTERS unravels pointedly and fearlessly, the way you would at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday, wine-drunk and unable to shake the rumor of a world you once built for someone."--Letitia Jiju, poet and editor for Psaltery & Lyre
"From its initial holy invocation of the poet's name through the course of its burning and urgent trajectory, LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET sees MJ Gomez detail the intricate inner workings of a "palace of flame" in what can only be described as a triumphant debut. Poignant and deliberate at every turn, Gomez circles the body in an act of poetic ceremony, executed with heart-rending care. At its core, Love Letters reminds us: "[the] truth is we are all immortal except for our bodies.""--NAT RAUM, author of the abyss is staring back
"MJ Gomez's LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET crackles with language that sings and singes. "What should become of Man?" Gomez asks, and through self-portraits and studies, love letters and invocations, deftly answers: "a man is a song." This is a radiant collection of poems that orbits devotion in all its pleasures and pains. Here are poems that bend light to make music. Here is a voice unafraid to speak in a world aflame."--Sarah Ghazal Ali, author of Theophanies
"Electric, grand, and merciful. With blunt precision, LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET by MJ Gomez interrogates our human devotions to each other, and to the world. His debut reckons with the expanse of passion, of intimacy, and of love: "Magic doesn't need to be real. / This body is enough, I swear." Every poem brings new landscapes of memory to contend with these facts, overflowing with the worldly case of our own dissatisfactions and hopeless desires. Every poem traverses faith: religious, interpersonal, and individual. Gomez writes a universe beautiful and so, so human. "I send to you a flame / like a bullet / repenting.""--Daniel Liu, author of COMRADE
Poetry. History.
