143. MJ Gomez | A burning planet, faith, and becoming a poet

Arts Calling

Content provided by Jaime Alejandro Cruz. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Jaime Alejandro Cruz or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://staging.podcastplayer.com/legal.

1y ago 58:32

MP3•Episode home

Weekly Shoutout: Listen to SPACEWALKERS FFEEATCOPO this instant!

Hi there,

Today I am so excited to be arts calling poet MJ Gomez!

About our guest: MJ Gomez is the author of Love Letters from a Burning Planet (Variant Literature, 2023). His poems are featured in Surging Tide, the Dawn Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Selkie, and others. You can find him on Twitter @bluejayverses

Thanks for this wonderful conversation, MJ! All the best!

LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET, now available from Variant Lit!

https://variantlit.com/product/love-letters/

PRAISE FOR LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET:

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

Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).

HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.

Much love,

169 episodes

#Theater #Fine Arts #Books #Arts #Jaime Alejandro