Dietzman, Alisha: Sweet Movie

Beacon Press, paperback Publication Date: October 17, 2023 Publisher Marketing: "What gives us the right to listen to someone else's body?" -Alisha Dietzman, from Sweet Movie A National Poetry Series winner selected by Victoria Chang, Sweet Movie confronts romantic and religious masochism to interrogate spiritual, sexual, and moral agency Sweet Movie's love poems and ekphrasis echo splintered versions of the same question: how do we navigate a world where the expectations of our performance--our presentation, our means of existence--are dictated by the viewers themselves? Mirroring the uncertain, unstable tenor of Dusan Makavajev's controversial avant-garde film Sweet Movie (1974), the voices in Sweet Movie are equal parts docile, feverish, and violent. This collection reimagines a feminist approach to religious masochism to explore the ways women are denied agency by both their faith communities and by outsiders. Dietzman's poems move through locations across Central Europe and the Am