Heat Wake

Overview

Heat Wake the phrase could designate the heat of the just-deceased animal, the warmed seat, the legacy of the anthropocene, the Fata Morgana that swirls and ripples sightlines. Heat Wake the book swirls with tactility, biology, evolution, and desire: hands reach, grab, feel, and are held as the poems percolate with quick sonic link and variation. The poems unfold amid the presence of stubborn rocks, ocean, suburban New Jersey, all approached at a queer angle. Time itself fluctuates within the poems and is central to their unfolding through the limited time of humans versus time cinematic, evolutionary, geological, and cosmic. Propelled by rollicking, playful language and quick-as-a-strobe-light metaphor, the reader travels through desire and its vicissitudes, through yearning and touch and the shaping of the future, from two boys stumbling toward each other in the darkness of a college dormitory to a bed in the depths of the sea, from the taciturn Arizona desert to giant sloths on Mars.

Author Biography

JASON ZUZGA was born in Camden, New Jersey, and grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Paris Review, Tin House, and the Yale Review. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, working on a dissertation about nature documentary and media.