Coeur de Lion

"Lines that make me want to have sex on the moon."-Thurston Moore

Cɶur de Lion is a book-length epistolary love poem that directly addresses a recently lost "you"--in accessible tones yet with extreme erudition and fierce intellect--but that also directly addresses the work of poetic address, how it shifts when the you shifts from a literal recipient, through loss, to poetry itself: art form, tradition; soul-catching medium. It's libidinal, heartful, hot with the memory of what was libidinal and heartfelt and hot. It's also a cult classic: self-published in 2007 and available now to an audience who will recognize the deep influence it has had on contemporary poets and poetry.

"Scathing and meek, furious and thoughtful, reckless and careful, brave and frightened, Cɶur de Lion is something you've never seen before that you already know by heart."--Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket

"A book of frank witty poetry that makes me laugh, cry, throw things."--Lena Dunham

"She is in me now like a hot virus and i am smitten."--Melissa Broder

"In Cɶur de Lion the erotics of power and powerlessness are not opposites--they flirt and morph and clash into a brilliant blast of poetic energy. I saw Ariana read from this book at UC Berkeley, and the walls of the academy rumbled. I fucking love this book." --Dodie Bellamy

"At the time we thought Cɶur de Lion a more comfortable book than The Cow, for it is, after all, a 'love poem' no matter how perverse, but as I look at it again I'm struck by how fierce its valences are, how intransigent its anti-nationalism. Already I think of Reines' work in art as dividing, like Picasso's, into periods, and if this is the rose period it is also the time in which blood rained down on the peoples' heads. Asked for the history of a certain sort of public sex, I mumble that there was Zabriskie Point, and then there was Peter Hujar, and there was Cɶur de Lion." --Kevin Killian

Author: Ariana Reines
Publisher: Fence Books
Published: 11/01/2011
Pages: 104
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 6.90h x 4.90w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781934200483

About the Author
Named one of Flavorwire's 100 best living writers and "a crucial voice of her generation" by KCRW's Michael Silverblatt, Ariana Reines is an award-winning poet, Obie-winning playwright, performing artist, and translator. Her books include A Sand Book (Tin House, 2019), winner of the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Prize & longlisted for the National Book Award, The Cow (Alberta Prize, 2006), Coeur De Lion (2007), and Mercury (2011), all from Fence Books, and The Origin of the World (2014) from Semiotext(e). Her Obie-winning play Telephone (2009) was commissioned by The Foundry Theatre and has been performed and published in Norwegian translation at the Mollebyen Literary Festival (2017) and at KW Berlin (2018) among others. Recent commissions include Possession (2023), a major sculpture & performance collaboration with Liz Magic Laser, at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY, and Divine Justice (2022), a 24-hour theatrical environment at Performance Space New York. Reines' performances & theatrical works include: Mortal Kombat (2015), commissioned by Le Mouvement Biel/Bienne & performed at The Whitney Museum, New York, NY, USA, and Gallery TPW, Toronto, CA, and Lorna (2013) at Martin E. Segal Theatre, New York, USA, both in collaboration with Jim Fletcher, The Origin of the World (2013) at Modern Art, London UK, and many others. Art exhibitions include Pubic Space (2016), a collaboration with Oscar Tuazon at Modern Art in London, UK, Exhaust (2016) at Contemporary Art Tasmania, AU, and Jane Dark (2014) at Western Front, Vancouver, Canada. Reines is the translator of Baudelaire's My Heart Laid Bare (Mal-O-Mar, 2009); Jean-Luc Hennig's The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal: Days and Nights of an Anarchist Whore (Semiotext(e) 2009); and Tiqqun's Preliminary Materials Toward a Theory of the Young Girl (Semiotext(e) 2012).