More praise for
Mojave in July
The women in Brommel's debut collection are given space to be everything from 1950s bombshells to meditating nature girls, and the pleasure from these bold portraits stays with a reader. Does Wonder Woman ever think, “Today is not a good day to face the world in hot pants”? Do regular women with exes and unruly back yards doubt everything, and still know “your / heart wants all of today no matter what tomorrow looks / like”? In these poems you might just find out. Or you just might be lieft with the smell of the desert and a yearning for honey. Turn the page and give yourself over.
– Katherine Riegel, Author of Love Songs from the End of the World
Angela M. Brommel’s debut poetry chapbook, Plutonium & Platinum Blonde, is both a séance in the Mojave Desert and a haunting love letter to Las Vegas. It delivers us to the center of America’s nuclear bomb testing era and explodes in a sweltering “Valley of Fire.” It is both seductive and devastating.
– Letisia Cruz, Author and Reviewer for The Literary Review
No artful dodging, no obfuscation, though one born of some understated sadness which is not drama or feint. One which endears us. Like her “Lap Dance”, wherein “desire is four miles long,” and for which I offer a teasing, final thought-- This collection touches me as one so unquestionably “truthful” that Angela’s caprice and sadness bleed right into it. Blood, mottled, then salty with hope but dilute with tears. I have never read a more artful, surprising and thoroughly honest first book.
– Lee Mallory, Author of Now and Then: Collected Poems by Lee Mallory