Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who causes me to constantly blurt out, “That is so true!” when I read her superlative writing. And her new collection, Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey Books, 2022) causes me to shout my praises to the top of the sky about her uniquely quintessential Leigh Chadwick poems.
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who reminds us, in stark terms, about the open gashes of violence in society with the very first line of her first poem in this collection: “The road to heaven is lined with bullet casings and leftover pieces of children too slow to duck.”
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who coats deep wounds with a miraculous salve in the very next poem when gazing at a deer in the backyard: “Your heart / threatened nothing but its next beat.”
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who knows a plausible reality to creation: “In the beginning, God removes Adam’s left kidney and molds it into / an AR-15.”
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who knows the right questions to ask Jesus: “I wanted to sit / in the back booth of a bar and ask him if he knew who smoked the / last clove cigarette. If he had / a favorite ocean. If the Dead Sea was / always supposed to be called that.”
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who knows the weariness of many: “The wind says I
/ am also tired of carrying the sound of death.”
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who divulges Leigh Chadwick’s own story, which is really our own stories, in a way (from Brief Excerpts from Leigh Chadwick Is Your Favorite Poet: An Unauthorized Biography, Written and Edited by Leigh Chadwick kindly included and one of my all time favorites sections): “Leigh Chadwick knows that if you drive one way for / too long you will eventually drown.”
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who has written a flawless collection blending absurdity and luminosity.
To find out more about the book: http://malarkeybooks.com/store/yourfavoritepoet
Dan Crawley is the author of the novella Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) and the short story collection The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021). His writing appears in a number of journals and anthologies, including JMWW, Lost Balloon, Tiny Molecules, and Atticus Review. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize.