Publisher’s Weekly calls ELEPHANT a “perceptive and haunting debut . . . emerging triumphantly . . . an acute and tender work of self-discovery and acceptance.”
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“What a beautiful book! These are remarkably wise poems, kind of a festival of wisdom, and then it turns whacky and I would even say piquant. Touching is exactly the word I mean about what I find here even when touch is the nullity Soren sounds. There is an abundance of the interior, Rilke being the easiest compare but Soren’s dedication to how the exterior wounds the soul and the soul carries on is the gift of this work that always unwinds and goes on, beautiful and beyond us. Spoiler alert! there are lots of poems in here I would call masterpiece.” – Eileen Myles
“Soren Stockman’s Elephant opens with seventeen short love poems, filled with raw passion and spirit. And then suddenly, we come to the second section, and the tone and landscape shift, slightly, into a world of the ‘Elephant Man,’ its imagistic power and mystery revealed—the other, the outcast, a human specimen to be doctored on. Indeed, love is woven into this urban space that defies time; but true ‘brotherly love’ becomes the speaker’s real quest as Elephant unfolds each gift.” – Yusef Komunyakaa
“Love is Stockman’s theme, and love done well requires listening: ‘Some people will care for you, / you need to let them.’ A dramatic monologue in the voice of John Merrick, ‘The Elephant Man,’ haunts the collection. Listening maps out the poems. Cryptic and original, Stockman turns his poems inside out by listening. Stockman writes: ‘I promise you gentleness has already lasted so many lives.’ Elephant read me. What brilliant poems.” — Spencer Reece
“‘I looked at my loneliness and could say nothing,’ writes Stockman in his debut. But these pages run away from that nothingness masterfully showcasing: love, shame, sensuality wrestling together. What a blessing Elephant is in the world, born ready to sing a tune that brings us out of solitude.” – Javier Zamora
“Soren Stockman is a true poet who is interested in looking at the world without judging it. His debut book of poems, Elephant, is full of heart and reminds me that being alive is a singular experience. If you want to be reminded of that, read this book.” – Alex Dimitrov
“From the fields of Wyoming to the New York stage, Soren Stockman’s poems of love and family are direct and forceful as they explore the powerful, unpayable debts that shape a self. Addiction, lust, anarchy—all are made tender in Stockman’s skill and imagination. Often inspired by theater and made alive by theater’s glittering and intoxicating illusions, Elephant shows us the beauty and pain of inhabiting a life and inhabiting a body.” – Richie Hofmann
“Tennyson insisted, ‘‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ With sober insistence, Soren Stockman’s lovely, lovesick debut Elephant echoes Tennyson’s sentiment for the ages, as it breaks your heart. Just as love will, inevitably, break your heart. And, like love, Elephant is worth it.” – Nicole Sealey
“Soren Stockman’s quirky poetics lay bare a private life in Elephant where readers will find a closeness akin to autobiography although the details never depend on autobiography. Further, like ‘a crow constructs / a tool from another tool and finds its food,’ Stockman presents a complex revealing of the legendary Elephant Man—and how he relates to and interrelates with this figure. Welcome this debut collection and Stockman’s marvelous elliptical sleight of hand.” – Kimiko Hahn
Elephant, Soren Stockman’s debut collection of poems, is forthcoming on September 15, 2022 from Four Way Books.
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