SAPPHO TERROR by Maura Modeya

Cover printed on Kelsey Excelsior Model O letterpress. ISBN 9798991148948.

If the personal is political, then Maura Modeya’s SAPPHO TERROR is a declaration of revolt. In this book, queerness becomes both the agent of terror and its object. “I want to be consumed. I want to disappear twice.” Extending the experiments of Mayer, Lonidier, and Stein, Modeya’s poems are as much about desire as they are about violence. They let us in on a secret: “Logic sometimes is so disgusting.” At once a performance and a document of performance, delirious and hyperalert, SAPPHO TERROR disrupts the routines of everyday life from within. “[SAPPHO] BURN ME [DOWN].”

"SAPPHO TERROR brings us into the poet's rapture, one that is profoundly balanced between the paradoxical and perilous forces of eros."—SERENA CHOPRA

"Sculpted into vigilant word-reliquaries, these poems exalt the femi-themme of the night while holding fast to danger."—VALERIE HSIUNG

"What arises out of sleeplessness? In SAPPHO TERROR, all boundaries fall away into ritual. There is a permeability, an eros, a freedom from all structures and institutions, even from our own self."—SAMUEL ACE