In These Poems Life Is a Party, Complete With Designer Drugs

New York Times

01-04-2025

In his seminal 'Letters to a Young Poet,' Rainer Maria Rilke encourages his long-distance apprentice to be as patient as possible with everything unsolved in his heart, to learn to love the questions themselves 'like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.' 'Do not now seek the answers,' he writes, 'which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.'
Alex Dimitrov, in his unflinching fifth collection of poems, 'Ecstasy,' is for the most part proudly unconcerned with answers. 'I have nothing/to prove and nothing to teach you,' he writes in 'Alex, It Was Really Nothing,' 'and this poem is not going to solve/any crisis or pretend it knows anything/about anything.' Early in the collection, one speaker declares: 'There is no true self./No one gets to the bottom of anything.'
Dimitrov, it would appear, is loath to try. Although his approach departs somewhat from Rilke's — the speaker in these poems may not always love the questions quite as much, or the patience they require — the basic message rings true: Stop worrying about figuring everything out, embrace the pain and unknowing, live in the present as best you can.
To this end, and true to its title, there is no shortage of indulgence in 'Ecstasy.' The characters in these poems party hard; there is plenty of sex and drinking and drugs. They smoke Sobranies and down bottles of Chablis at Café Charlot in Paris. They are seasoned regulars of New York nightlife, bouncing from one downtown fixture to the next. One poem is titled 'Xanax'; another is called 'Poppers.' There's a full section with poems dedicated to each of the seven deadly sins.
Dimitrov — who leans toward single stanzas broken into short lines and succinct, staccato sentences — doesn't hesitate to air a few grievances along the way. In 'Monday,' he writes: 'Doesn't it bother you sometimes/what living is, what the day has turned into?/So many screens and meetings/and things to be late for.' But overall, 'Ecstasy' reads more like celebration than critique, a reminder to enjoy the pleasures of the world wherever possible and not take ourselves, or life, too seriously.
As in 'Love and Other Poems,' his previous collection, Dimitrov's man-about-town quality is on full display here, though the tone has shifted somewhat. The poems remain candid and conversational, but at times they also feel more disillusioned and resigned. 'Everything is a lie/but everything is still beautiful,' he writes in 'Wednesday,' which ends: 'I just love this running around/even if I'm not free.'
But Dimitrov still comes across as the romantic he was in his earlier work, too, with a curiosity and thirst for connection and life's possibilities. In 'Tuesday' — an endearingly earnest meditation on love and selfhood 'meant to be read/at the bar on a Tuesday/when you're dehydrated/and not feeling so great' — he writes:
The speaker admits that he imagined his life (and perhaps a past relationship) would have turned out differently, but the poem ultimately ends with an emphasis on all that is still possible: 'You can walk out/tonight and feel totally new./All you need is the right pair of boots.'
'Ecstasy' is a rollicking paean to pleasure, an ode to realness and resilience. These poems are raw and honest and deeply personal, and vibrate with the intimacy and electricity typically reserved for late-night conversations between old friends or new lovers after the third round. Hilarious in places and heartbreaking in others, they emerge from a place of inner turmoil and inner knowing, and do not apologize for anything.
Dimitrov is keenly aware of the hardship and labor involved in living, how imperfect and lost we sometimes feel, but insists we learn to embrace this, to celebrate it unabashedly, to accept that the freedom possible in the present is far more sacred than most wisdom we can glean from the past. In this way, the sense of resignation and disillusionment that permeates the collection functions as a form of liberation and empowerment. And maybe, as it turns out, a kind of answer in itself: 'I'm just gonna do it my way,' he writes in the final lines of 'Thursday.' 'I'm gonna ignore the news and the fads/and the outrage because baby—/heart is mostly all I have./That and some fight on the side.'