The Goat, by Christine R. Neuman

Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Christine Neuman’s chapbook is a raw, intimate offering bleeding openly on each page, inviting readers into a world where emotion and meaning arrives fragmented as the sentence-level grammatical errors themselves. Written in confessional surrealist style, the poems unfold through broken sentences and sharp juxtapositions. Neuman’s work refuses polish in favor of truth, with humor, grief, confusion and rage against the machine, Christine the queer-surrealist Sacramento poet slips between genders and sexuality, fluidly as they are, entering a subconscious realm that blends comedy and vulnerability, carrying emotional weight in hopes of bringing light to dark places. Each poem is driven by the belief that poetry should move the reader, should make them feel something, and at times, make them uncomfortable. The chapbook is not interested in real resolutions, it only exists to name the mess, longing, and the contradictions that shape our human condition.

Christine Neuman writes from a place of once feeling like she did not “fit in,” only to realize, through her creative writing master’s program and immersion in diverse poetic voices, that the human experience is far more shared than it appears. This realization fuels this chapbook’s core: reaching to an audience who shares similar fragmented feelings of un-belonging, thriving in the “weird.” By blending conversational narrative poetry with surrealism, Neuman creates a bridge between lived experience and inner chaos offering space for readers to also shape-shift because sexuality and identity is never fixed, but ever evolving.

Christine R. Neuman received an Associate and Bachelors in English, as well as a Masters in Creative Writing. The Masters and Bachelors were received from Sacramento State University, Associates from American River College. She is a Queer-Surrealist poet who writes in a narrative, confessional, conversational style largely influenced by James Tate, Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara. She enjoys open mics at local poetry events, playing her acoustic guitar outside, listening to Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen while appreciating a cigarette. She is currently working as an English Adjunct Professor teaching English Composition and Literature courses at multiple different institutions. She has been published within Cough Syrup, The Meadow, ¡Laplante!, The Fresh Water Review, Mantis, The Quarterly and more.