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Patricia Lockwood

Patricia Lockwood Biography

Poet

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“This is the secret: when I encounter myself on the page, I am shocked at how forceful I seem. On the page I am strong, because that is where I put my strength. On the page I am everything that I am not, because that is where I put myself. I am no longer whispering through the small skirted shape of a keyhole: the door is knocked down and the roof is blown off and I am aimed once more at the entire wide night.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“As I walk behind her down the halls, it happens. I shrink inch by inch until I am no longer an adult, but a baby toddling along in a comically oversized business suit. I have been pretending to be a grown-up this whole time. My briefcase is full of milk: I have been found out. 'This, then, is home. What is home? Is it a sort of lap of location, that exists only if certain conditions are in place? Is it the intersection of rigidity and comfort--a junction of familiartiy that you curl into? Is it a feeling? I don't know, but I'm being hugged hard against it, and I can't tell when I'll be let go.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“In a field where else you found a stack of revealing nature photographs, of supernude nature photographs, split beaver of course nature photographs, photographs full of 70s bush, nature taking come from every man from miles around, nature with come back to me just dripping from her lips. The stack came up to your eye, you saw: nature is big into bloodplay, nature is into extreme age play, nature does wild inter- racial, nature she wants you to pee in her mouth, nature is dead and nature is sleeping and still nature is on all fours, a horse it fucks nature to death up in Oregon, nature is hot young amateur redheads, the foxes are all in their holes for the night, nature is hot old used-up cougars, nature makes gaping fake-agony faces, nature is consensual dad- on-daughter, nature is completely obsessed with twins, nature doing specialty and nature doing niche, exotic females they line up to drip for you, nature getting paddled as hard as you can paddle her, oh a whitewater rapid with her ass in the air, high snowy tail on display just everywhere.”

MenNaturePhotographyMetaphorSexualityMisogynyInnuendoPaddleBeaverNudesThe Male Gaze
Book:Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals
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“When I was a child, I always hated being used in my father's sermons, shrunk to a symbol to illustrate some larger lesson, flattened out to give other people comfort or instruction or even a laugh. It did some violence to my third dimension; it made it difficult for me to breathe. 'That's not me,' I would think, listening to some fable where a stick figure of myself moved automatically toward a punishing moral. 'That has nothing to do with me at all.' If I had a soul, I thought, it was that resistance, which would never let another human being have the last word on me.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“I sometimes wish my childhood had been less obsessed with the question of why we are here. But that must be the question of any childhood. To write about your mother and father is to tell the story of your own close call, to count all the ways you never should have existed. To write about home is to write about how you dropped from space, dragging ellipses behind you like a comet, and how you entered your country and state and city, and finally your four-cornered house, and finally your mother's body and finally your own. From the galaxy to the grain and back again. From the fingerprint to the grand design. Despite all the conspiracies of the universe, we are here; every moment we are here we arrive.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“A woman's body always stands on the outskirts of the town, verging on uncivilization. A thin paper gown is all that separates it from the wilderness. Half of its whole being is devoted to remembering how to live in the woods. This is why Witch, this is why Whore, this is why Unlucky and this is why Unclean. This is why attempts to govern the female body always have the feeling of a last resort, because the female body is fundamentally ungovernable.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“Back in her childhood she used to have holy feelings, knifelike flashes that laid the earth open like a blue watermelon, when the sun came down to her like an elevator she was sure she could step inside and be lifted up, up, past all bad luck, past every skipped thirteenth floor in every building human beings had ever built. She would have these holy days and walk home from school and think, After this I will be able to be nice to my mother, but she never ever was. After this I will be able to talk only about what matters, life and death and what comes after, but she still went on about the weather.”

ChildhoodWeatherLife And DeathAfterlifeEpiphanyBad Luck
Book:No One Is Talking About This
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“We worshipped a great white body that was an avalanche of good news, and we slit it open in every part. “That can’t go through the mail,” the postman gasped, “because that is a super-stabbed body!” The super-stabbed body rose up, with many butterknives sticking out of it, and said, “I AM the mail.” It had so many lovers.”

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Book:Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals
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“The difference between her and her sister could be attributed to the fact that she came of age in the nineties, during the heyday of plaid and heroin, while her sister came of age in the 2000s, during the heyday of thongs and cocaine. That was when everything got a little chihuahua and started starring in its own show. That was when we saw the whole world’s waxed pussy getting out of a car, and said, more.”

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Book:No One Is Talking About This
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“What did those people teach you?" he asked me one night, mystified. "What exactly do Catholics believe?" I'd been preparing my whole life for this question. "First of all, blood. BLOOD. Second of all, thorns. Third of all, put dirt on your forehead. Do it right now. Fourth of all, Martin Luther was a pig in a cloak. Fifth of all, Jesus is alive, but he's also dead, and he's also immortal, but he's also made of clouds, and his face is a picture of infinite peace, but he also always looks like one of those men in a headache commercial, because you'rec causing him so much suffering whenever you cuss. He is so gentle that sheep seem like demented murderers in his presence, but also rays of sunlight shoot out of his face so hard they can kill people. In fact, they do kill people, and one day they will kill you. He has a tattoo of a daisy on his lower back and he gets his hair permed every eight weeks. He's wearing a flowing white dress, but only because people didn't know about jeans back then. He's holding up two fingers because his dad won't let him have a gun. If he lived on earth, he would have a white truck, plastered with bumper stickers of Calvin peeing on a smaller Calvin who is not a Catholic." Jason was aghast. "Thorns?" he whispered. "But that's the most dangerous part of the rose.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“It is possible to pin the moment when power descends, is bestowed is transferred from one hand to another? It does not come down as a dove, but as a lick of fire, a language the powerful speak to each other. 231 We couldn't say yes that often because then they would all come; they all needed help, every one. Need is the human being natural state. Need water, need food, need green money, need meaning, need touch and need talk, need I don't know what. 288”

PowerHuman Need
Book:Priestdaddy
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“Above all else, he loves trilogies. There has never been a trilogy he didn't like, and if you don't understand why, I have three words for you: father, son, and Holy Spirit. Foremost among his favorites is the original Star Wars trilogy, which he fervently believes is about priests in space, and the first three Alien films, which he believes are about how all women are destined to be mothers. Currently he is obsessed with the Transformers movies, because the greatest Transformer of all . . . is Jesus Christ. He even sat me down one day to have a serious discussion about "moral choices the Transformers are forced to make." At no point did I interrupt him to say, "But Dad, they're cars." This means I am becoming an adult. Because truly, the Transformers are more than cars. Some of them are trucks.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“I don't experience much loneliness, oddly. Sometimes I have thought I was lonely and it turned out I was in reality wanting a snack, just like sometimes I have thought I was mad and it turned out I was actually wearing too many sweaters. I've always been very content in the company of my own thoughts, and I prefer to spend much of my time alone. But I do like conversation - for the exercise, for the spark, for the let's-see-where-it-takes-us, for being able to dip into communal creativity when you're tired of your own air.”

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Author:Patricia Lockwood
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