Thumbsucker, the third poetry collection by Kat Giordano, is a celebration of the juvenile, attention-seeking, and emotionally-intense. These poems are funny, sentimental, and so sharp they might make you cringe, at the speaker or at yourself, but won't flinch if you do. "A eulogy, minus death, plus balloons."
Praise for Thumbsucker
Kat Giordano's Thumbsucker is one of those bruised, bloody-knuckled, cut-lipped books that has flung itself into life and all its suffering and is here to tell you, dripping in manna and umbra, how it survived. But behind this, cast like a shadow at dusk, is an argument that says despite its pain, its ugliness, life is beauty, is splendor, laughter and love. Read these poems for the iron in them, for Giordano's ability to rock you with a line like a surprise left hook. Return for the way these poems part the dark to show you something bright. "it felt wrong of me / to eulogize something I killed, / to miss it, even, / and still not be sorry."
—Todd Dillard, author of Ways We Vanish
While reading Thumbsucker I thought of my grandfather, who cut off the tip of his ring finger with a circular saw. These poems are instruments so perfectly sharp, spinning at such a merciless speed, that when they cleanly separate you from yourself, all you can do is smile manically and wait for the pain to come.
—William Duryea, Editor in Chief of Misery Tourism
In Thumbsucker, the dingy dive bars, ex-loves, and junior high bullies of Kat Giordano’s life are portals to unexpected worlds. These poems are emotional snapshots of despair; no matter how blinding a light once was, the images always fade.
—Graham Irvin, author of I Have A Gun
Kat Giordano has written a collection that is so real and specific it might as well be your own memories. These poems puked all over my heart. These poems put their fingers in my mouth and I liked it.
—Axel B. Kolcow, Deputy Editor of Taco Bell Quarterly
