AN INCH THICK by Theo Ellin Ballew
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9781942723189
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publication day: October 24, 2024
perfect bound trade paperback
9 x 6 inches, 79 pages
ISBN 978-1-942723-18-9
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Press Release:
an_inch_thick_downloadable_press_release.pdf
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AN INCH THICK is a future-mythic life story in lullaby, peopled by punkish attempts to bind and measure and hold still (attempts egged on by the memory of their impossibility). These texts were written between ages 19 and 26, after an itinerant Southwestern upbringing. They hold: fleeing from homes, homes that flee, femme sex in all directions, hedonism, cheap snacks, swelling, shrinking, bloating, and endless attempts to grow the good.
Praise for An Inch Thick
“For readers who are desperate to remember that writing is a language art and that the painterly musical possibilities of something so quotidian as words can be entirely remade—here is a uniquely gorgeous and sensory voyage. Give up previous ideas of sense for the story that lurks in the fleshy cracks and crevices of linguistic exhilaration. Read on!”
—Thalia Field
“An Inch Thick is yr body n its emissions n its sensations n the things outside that come into contact, almost swooping in from blind spots catching u by surprise,—the leaf brushing yr ear fuzzily as it drops to ground, the aphid tickling the edge of yr eyelash, flanks pressed by gentle jaw a warm soft scaly rough,—sometimes sth else:: sth like being tumbled by waves a bit roughly but not unpleasantly,—more like yr at the mercy of a power far greater being exercised cat-like:: toying w yr submitted lil °sof body an excited °fly rubbing forearms habitually gleefully seated upon °overripened fruit {broadcasting body scent (of lover last or mos memorable)}”
—Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough
“Looking up after finishing An Inch Thick, I see the people around me suddenly defamiliarized, like the beings in this sci-fi Bildungsroman. They’re wet, thing-like, inherently sexual, potentially hazardous, infinite in their stinking: they’re human, that is—perfectly human, at last. I can still smell Theo Ellin Ballew’s sentences, buoyant and sopping, bubbling up like gasses from a primordial soup. They smell like Beckett at his strangest, like stabs at love, like unwashed bodies coming into contact, orienting each other toward quantum futures of gut-wrought potential. An Inch Thick splatters the world as we know it with bodily fluids in order to make it reflect back in new colors. This is a sublimely fleshy book, and it nobly defies categorization.”
—Kit Schluter
“An Inch Thick is a sweet-tempered spade. Spade because it’s solid and piercing, and sweet-tempered because it sieves like a swollen digit, hotly overwhelmed with its own fluidity, testing both saltwater and soil for their temperature. It is cognizant, unashamed, and deserving of its coolness and the cool things it scratches, and its hotness and the hot things it scratches, deserting home for quick and slight immersions in candy, in lips, in remark. An Inch Thick is undeniably a great kisser.”
—Chanté L. Reid
“Always at sea, and fiercely present in their visceral homewaters, this poet of cybernetic revolution takes us into the belly of the beast, generously giving us to share. A tumultuous experience.”
—John Cayley
“An Inch Thick attends with love to the sensations that we would prefer to ignore. Tenderly, precisely, it ventures into thirst and flab, drool and stench. Theo Ellin Ballew has created a new lexicon for the senses. In doing so, they articulate a new ethics of care, of celebration even, for what we otherwise might be tempted to call the abject body. Like Jonah inside the whale, T.E.B. guides us through the insides of our experience.”
—Eli Payne Mandel
“For readers who are desperate to remember that writing is a language art and that the painterly musical possibilities of something so quotidian as words can be entirely remade—here is a uniquely gorgeous and sensory voyage. Give up previous ideas of sense for the story that lurks in the fleshy cracks and crevices of linguistic exhilaration. Read on!”
—Thalia Field
“An Inch Thick is yr body n its emissions n its sensations n the things outside that come into contact, almost swooping in from blind spots catching u by surprise,—the leaf brushing yr ear fuzzily as it drops to ground, the aphid tickling the edge of yr eyelash, flanks pressed by gentle jaw a warm soft scaly rough,—sometimes sth else:: sth like being tumbled by waves a bit roughly but not unpleasantly,—more like yr at the mercy of a power far greater being exercised cat-like:: toying w yr submitted lil °sof body an excited °fly rubbing forearms habitually gleefully seated upon °overripened fruit {broadcasting body scent (of lover last or mos memorable)}”
—Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough
“Looking up after finishing An Inch Thick, I see the people around me suddenly defamiliarized, like the beings in this sci-fi Bildungsroman. They’re wet, thing-like, inherently sexual, potentially hazardous, infinite in their stinking: they’re human, that is—perfectly human, at last. I can still smell Theo Ellin Ballew’s sentences, buoyant and sopping, bubbling up like gasses from a primordial soup. They smell like Beckett at his strangest, like stabs at love, like unwashed bodies coming into contact, orienting each other toward quantum futures of gut-wrought potential. An Inch Thick splatters the world as we know it with bodily fluids in order to make it reflect back in new colors. This is a sublimely fleshy book, and it nobly defies categorization.”
—Kit Schluter
“An Inch Thick is a sweet-tempered spade. Spade because it’s solid and piercing, and sweet-tempered because it sieves like a swollen digit, hotly overwhelmed with its own fluidity, testing both saltwater and soil for their temperature. It is cognizant, unashamed, and deserving of its coolness and the cool things it scratches, and its hotness and the hot things it scratches, deserting home for quick and slight immersions in candy, in lips, in remark. An Inch Thick is undeniably a great kisser.”
—Chanté L. Reid
“Always at sea, and fiercely present in their visceral homewaters, this poet of cybernetic revolution takes us into the belly of the beast, generously giving us to share. A tumultuous experience.”
—John Cayley
“An Inch Thick attends with love to the sensations that we would prefer to ignore. Tenderly, precisely, it ventures into thirst and flab, drool and stench. Theo Ellin Ballew has created a new lexicon for the senses. In doing so, they articulate a new ethics of care, of celebration even, for what we otherwise might be tempted to call the abject body. Like Jonah inside the whale, T.E.B. guides us through the insides of our experience.”
—Eli Payne Mandel