“Book Descriptions: Angelo Maneage’s The Improper Use of Plates is a rambunctious, terrifying narrative of illness and coping, familial love, and the manic state of waiting for health-related changes. “I was crawling around I guess I was // all over the place” says the narrator, bereft, from a hospital floor, as prelude to operatic bargaining with the Devil/God for their mother’s life. This collection is delightfully paranoid and explosive, Maneage’s absurd and tender syntax reminiscent of Daniel Borzutzky or Sabrina Orah Mark, operating in the space between fable and nightmare. These are bleakly hilarious poems and Maneage is a master at capturing the awkward slapstick of a skirmish with death.
— Caryl Pagel, author of Out Of Nowhere Into Nothing” DRIVE
Read Ebook 
