'I am daring love to be anything else, ' A. Loudermilk writes, 'to be on its best behavior wicked, to be heartache / in its prime.' Daring's exactly the word; these fearless and live-wire poems portray Southern culture-and the prism and prison of gender-with candor, rage, and an eye for telling detail so exact it verges on tenderness--Mark Doty. A. Loudermilk's poems, nonfiction, and cultural criticism have appeared in Tin House, The Mississippi Review, and The Madison Review

A. Loudermilk utilizes confessional, persona, and third-person poems throughout this intimate yet socially conscious first collection. Strange Valentine is an indictment of love, fixating on the paranoid relationship between body and state, on the dangerous relationship between family history and sexual history, and on the elusive relationship between gender and sexuality—specifically as experienced in the working-class towns of the southernmost Midwest. Riding highly crafted rhythms in sound, line, and invented form, Loudermilk’s multivoiced storytelling resounds with the characters and heartbreaks of the heartland.