Call Me California by Heather Sweeney

At first glance, Heather Sweeney’s Call Me California has the look of a primer or of the want ads, both now obsolete media that used the most basic elements of language. By emphasizing one term and then dexterously pivoting on sound and association, Sweeney’s poems demonstrate how language performs the volatility of the contemporary moment and accommodates it. Which is to say that words are as capricious as our minds under the influence of the internet, tarot, wine, and jasmine. And as fecund. Call Me California holds tenderness with cynicism, playfulness with sincerity, in language so economic and lush it could furtively edify us and solicit itself.

–J’Lyn Chapman

Heather Sweeney’s Call Me California offers a gorgeous incantation, a sounding out in the world to discover one’s self.  Guided by the poet’s delightfully off-kilter cosmic radar, the reader is hurtled (happily) along a journey through wonder, ruin, hexes, and epiphany. Each page is a pleasure.

–Megan Kaminski