Surviving the Moment of Impact

T. Cole Rachel, a self-described “weird midwestern kid who dreamed all his life of running away to the big city,” writes poems about the act of survival. His locales are specific (the Midwest, rural America) and his voice (the adolescent outsider) recognizable, but, as Bret Easton Ellis writes, he “makes the mundane feel urgent, fresh, vital. This is powerful writing.” “The energy and precision and respect [Rachel] brings to [his subjects] is heart-stoppingly affirmative.” — Edmund White