Judas Goat, Gabrielle Bates
Judas Goat, Gabrielle Bates
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Judas Goat
Poems

Author: Gabrielle Bates

Narrator: Gabrielle Bates

Unabridged: 1 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/24/2023


Synopsis

"Stellar . . . with great humanity, grace and precision." —Nicole Sealey, author of Ordinary Beast

Gabrielle Bates's electric debut collection Judas Goat plumbs the depths of intimate relationships. The book's eponymous animal is used to lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared, and its harrowing existence echoes through this spellbinding collection of forty poems, which wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the "forbidden felt language" of sexual and sacred love. These poems conjure encounters with figures from scriptures, domesticated animals eyeing the wild, and mothering as a shape-shifting, spectral force; they question what it means to love another person and how to exorcise childhood fears. All the while, the Deep South haunts, and no matter how far away the speaker moves, the South always draws her back home.

In confession, in illumination, Bates establishes herself as an unflinching witness to the risks that desire necessitates, as Judas Goat holds listeners close and whispers its unforgettable lines.

About Gabrielle Bates

Gabrielle Bates's poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, the American Poetry Review, and other publications. A writer, visual artist, and cohost of The Poet Salon podcast, Bates is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and now lives in Seattle, Washington.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Isa

How can something so tender be so violent at the same time? Breathtaking collection.......more

Goodreads review by el

some beauties in here!!!! largely forgettable tho......more

I have been looking forward to writing this review since I first encountered Gabrielle Bates’ poem “The Dog” in 2019. Originally published in The Offing, “The Dog,” all at once a meditation on the role of the witness as well as a presumed elegy for a dog whose leash gets trapped in a train door, is......more

Goodreads review by Lyd

Speechless! (Review to come after I gather my thoughts)......more

Goodreads review by Mattea

June 2024: It transfixes me still. I began rereading this remarkable collection before meeting Gabrielle in Paris. Truly, she is one of my favorite contemporary poets—a kindred spirit, a genius, a gem of a person. I can't wait to see what she publishes next. <3 March 2023: "Round white mushrooms emer......more