The Gardens of Our Childhoods
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Narrated by:
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John Belk
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By:
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John Belk
About this listen
Poems considering self, masculinity, and culture through the spectacle of professional wrestling.
In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods, the distance between spectacle and reality blurs.
Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus “Buff” Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us.
The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press’s Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.
©2022 John Belk (P)2023 Autumn House PressListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"In The Gardens of Our Childhoods, Belk transfers the Bard's comment that 'All the world's a stage' from the theater's stage to the comic, violent, vulnerable, and wild ring of WrestleMania. This is a book of searching, tender, open, moments. Life is beautiful but not without its dangers. Belk knows this is true and does a fine job guiding us down the garden path."—Matthew Dickman, author of Wonderland
"To say that the bulk of these splendid poems is about pro wrestling is to say that Robert Frost wrote mainly about sound agricultural practices. When Belk says that seeing a gladiator’s spectacular move is like being kissed unexpectedly by someone you have a crush on, he reminds us how life and art and sport work: we script them to the degree we can, yet there’s always a surprise. No matter who we are, our dreams are what unite us, for everything we do is about 'coming together / & leaving,' about hoping 'to be known, to / be touched, to be less lonely than before.'"—David Kirby, author of Help Me, Information
"With the pageantry of professional wrestling as his lens and southern American boyhood as his vantage, Belk shows us 'something beautiful / made by a boy with all his heart' in his earnest, dazzling debut collection. The Gardens of Our Childhoods charts the slim line between masculine strength and vulnerability, asking us what it means for—and costs—this collection’s vast cast of characters to commit to tenderness in a world waiting to stomp on their backs and toss them out of the ring. After all, 'who would expect a large man born of noonsun & sinew to be delicate'? Belk powerfully summons legendary pro wrestlers, communes with their families, and invokes his own beloveds in a book that moves deftly between the spectacle of stage makeup and the quiet of newly planted irises: beauty performed and beauty deliberately tended to."—Rachel Mennies, author of The Naomi Letters
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Story
Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
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Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
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The Waves
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Frances Jeater
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.
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Not an easy read but worth it
- By Lena on 03-26-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Past Is Red
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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The future is blue - endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown. Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she’s the only one who knows it. She’s the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.
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The most perfectly perfect book a F**kwit could ever want.
- By Steve Groves on 02-10-22
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Finding Mother God
- By: Carol Lynn Pearson
- Narrated by: Carol Lynn Pearson
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Call Her Goddess - call her God the Mother - call her the Feminine Principle - her children need her, and our world deeply suffers the pains of her absence. Through the warmth and the wit of poetry, this book is an invitation for all - women, men, of any religion or of no religion - to welcome her home and set a permanent place for her at the family table. Carol Lynn Pearson’s poetry is accessible, thoughtful, and thought-provoking - the perfect balance of wisdom, humility, and humor.
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Beautifully Read
- By Lisa Robinson on 04-04-24
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New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
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Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
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Leaves of Grass
- By: Walt Whitman
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the great innovators in American letters, Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves of Grass is his masterpiece, written in a pure, uninhibited style, combining sensual and mystical sensibilities. Its bold, joyous voice, its expansive optimism, and its transcendental vision made it uniquely American.
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No chapters! Can't skip to a particular poem :(
- By April Antoniou on 02-08-13
By: Walt Whitman
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Orange World and Other Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In “Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors”, two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. Plus much more.
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Wild Ride
- By Georgia on 02-07-20
By: Karen Russell
What listeners say about The Gardens of Our Childhoods
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Andre
- 03-01-23
The Gardens of Our Poetry
I dove and bought this book when I realized an audio version was available. I always feel that poetry is enhanced by listening to a poet read their work. I was not disappointed. John Belk has a storyteller's voice and a unity of vision that pulled me into the various stories of wrestlers and their families and fans he shared. While not a wrestling fan, I reveled in his tales of a time from my childhood when many neighborhood boys, a few girls, and some adults watched wrestling. I would listen to these stories again and share them.
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