Alamo Theory

Author: Josh Bell

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (2016)

Part cultural critique, part surreal saga, and funniest at its most distressed, Josh Bell’s new book interrogates poetry, and language itself, asking tough questions of identity, of masculinity, and of American culture and its outliers. “Have you attended a picnic / that didn’t end in tears?” Alamo Theory is a humorously and darkly imagined corridor of time, anchored by a series of provocations spoken by epic hero Vince Neil, the former frontman of Mötley Crüe. Bell’s poems embrace isolation amid the waste and wonder of the senses.