He’s a poet for people who don’t think they like poetry, the rare poet who’s regularly featured in poetry journals and Esquire. He uses words like most people use a needle-nose pliers, to pry, wrench, twist, and argue their way into and out of things. Alex Lemon is a linguistic badass, and he’s reading tonight with a group at Honey, coming out with a new collection from Milkweed in February, and will soon be riffing on the MIA collection in a series of essays you’ll find on MIA Stories and in the galleries.
Lemon’s personal story, documented in his incredible memoir, ironically titled Happy, took a dark turn while attending Macalester College. A brain injury and a series of strokes left him reeling, but he emerged happy to be alive, eyes wide open, on fire for a world that had kept him in the game. “If you’re bored,” he says, “it’s because you’re boring. The world’s not boring.”
Catch him tonight at 7:30 p.m., and watch for his writing here over the next few months.