"Alex Vartan Gubbins delivers lyrical postcards of pain and perplexity from a land and people overlooked by history. Its literature remains untranslated, its songs dismissed, its cities trampled by geopolitical demigods. This is why we need the poet: to disturb our indifference and draw us into unsettling voices."?Shahé Mankerian, author of History of Forgetfulness "Alex Vartan Gubbins invites us on a pilgrimage of longing and desire, across destination and time where the present and the past are bound with the ephemeral, while reminding us that despite our tumultuous histories, we are capable of building a world of tenderness that leads to 'a doorway of blessings.'"?Abayomi Animashaun, author of Seahorses and The Giving of Pears "Listening is an art form in Alex Vartan Gubbins's debut collection of poetry. His city is Yerevan, and he describes 'drunk sentences of Armenian mixed with Russian' and how death is ever present. 'Funeral in Javakhq' tells us what death is like: 'spring, and a sensible rain turns to snow.' There is a mime of a kneeling man who 'speaks to the grave, waits for an answer.

' We do not hear the words. There is a duduk player whose 'diatonic climbs a valve / opening into the lands of a widowed empress.' And the poet, like the last Soviet spy who has not returned to Moscow, determines the worth of 'these headstones, these painted portraits looking at us / throughout the service.' Gubbins gives us 'the duduk's grievous catharsis.' The lyrical quality of 'The Dead Grenade' is like the moon and 'how it scratches / our eyes.' His poetry crawls beneath your skin, and you read on because you are compelled to see where the poet takes you: He demonstrates how to open a pomegranate and 'choose blackening reds / stuck to the hive-like pulp.' It is an erotic moment that evokes D. H.

Lawrence. He plucks 'them one by one,' in this human act of 'sucking cool / between teeth.'"?Russell Thorburn, author of Somewhere We'll Leave the World (Wayne State University Press).