East Coast Release Party for Victor D. Infante's 'Suffer For This'
Schedule
Sun Dec 08 2024 at 06:00 pm
UTC-05:00Location
The White Room | Worcester, MA
Poet and journalist Victor D. Infante and Bedlam Book Cafe present the East Coast release party celebrating Victor's new novella from Moon Tide Press, "Suffer For This"!The event will feature a reading from the book by Victor, a conversation about the book with Victor and Oliver de la Paz, music by James Keyes and special guest readings by Oliver, Lea Deschenes, Mckendy Fils-Aimé, Jenith Charpentier, Karen Sharpe, Joe Fusco Jr. and Laura DiCaronimo, hosted by the inimitable Joslyn Fox!
Victor D. Infante is the author of the poetic novella "Suffer For This," from Moon Tide Press, and the poetry collection, "City of Insomnia," from Write Bloody Publishing. He is the features editor for The Worcester Telegram & Gazette and the editor for Worcester Magazine. His fiction and poetry has appeared in dozens of journals, including The Chiron Review, The Collagist, Barrelhouse, Pearl, Spillway and The Banyan Review, as well as in anthologies such as "Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry," "Spoken Word Revolution Redux," "The Last American Valentine: Poems to Seduce and Destroy," "Aim For the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry," "The Incredible Sestina Anthology" and all three "Murder Ink: Tales of New England Newsroom Crime" anthologies. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, the poet Lea C. Deschenes, and their army of ferrets.
In "Suffer for This," poet and journalist Victor D. Infante deconstructs the reality of a happy marriage, jumping back and forth in time to examine how a person learns to love, from early fumbling teenage failures to teetering on the brink of adultery. Throughout the narrative, he examines the speaker’s persona through several decades, eyeing him with a compassion the speaker often does not allow himself. This is also a book about a love of music, how it shapes a person, and how it comes to express the heart in ways that words sometimes can’t.
What People Are Saying:
“In Victor D. Infante’s book of lyrical recollections, he invites us to reminisce about falling in love, diving into mosh pits, and our MTV VJ crushes. The vast catalog of hits, from Dylan to The Cure, plays as the soundtrack to a lifetime full of bands and bars and then gives way to meditations on belonging and marriage. We see the artist’s journey here, inspired by the stylings of the radio hum in syncopation with the urges of the human heart. What we receive in return is a beautiful ballad of gratitude for the past and for those who have swayed with us in harmony.” – Oliver de la Paz, author of The Diaspora Sonnets
“Victor D. Infante’s Suffer for This is part memoir, part poem, part glossary of longing. Reading it, love becomes an autonomous principle, a living ghost, each chapter a kind of vow. ‘They’re not just words,’ he writes, ‘and this is not just salt on my lips. And when I kiss her, even the ocean fades away.’ Infante is at the height of his powers as both storyteller and lyricist, able to braid wonder with regret, fear with delight, suffering with savor.” – Brendan Constantine, author of Dementia, My Darling
“From the taste of the first cigarette you smoked to this morning’s cup of coffee. From the sound of the first punk song you heard to the sound of your wife in the shower. From the first desperately awkward attempts at sex and maybe even love to a decades-deep romance whose dance is as easy as breathing. Victor D. Infante’s Suffer For This conjures a lifetime of relationships and is by turns painfully honest, expansively poetic, and full of the kind of insight that only later life can bring. The nameless characters are so expertly and specifically rendered, that you can feel the electricity and devastation they inspire in the narrator. The strangeness of adolescence is painted with a stunning accuracy that is simultaneously compassionate and brutal. The foundational loves and adventures of early adulthood are written like anthems we can all sing along to – after all, we all know the words. Infante’s language is steeped in both poetry and candor, a deft trick if ever I saw one, while turning nostalgia on its head. This is a book for anyone who has ever thought they were the only one to wrestle with their own vulnerability, their own wild lust, or their own seemingly permanent heartbreak. It brings a clarity and musicality to the motley yet universal experiences that sum up a life of trying to love, trying to fuck, and trying not to hurt anyone too badly in the process. Profoundly insightful and beautifully written, this is the novel for Generation X that we couldn’t have until now. The truth, hope and vividness of this book will stay with you for a long time.” – Beth Marquez, poet
