Arun Jeetoo: I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night (2020)
Tragic and euphoric in its candid representations of love, Arun Jeetoo’s sumptuous debut pamphlet I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night explores the intricacies of loving in the 21st century. Agile, sensual and achingly honest, these poems ask searching questions about the body in romantic and sexual relationships, the literal and metaphorical barriers that contemporary lovers face, and the role of affection in a disconnected world.
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Arun Jeetoo pulls at the throbbing veins of love: how love is chemical, numerical, dirty, fleeting, a strawberry sauce, ‘batteries in a circuit sparking, a trick of the light ’‒ and how love-magic can only last 53 days, then return ear-stained and electric on day 70. Jeetoo has an amazing talent for the textual and tactile, creating word-exhibitions of cigarette ash, disowned eyelashes, sticky skin, shaking hands pouring wine, initials in stale bark, white-blistered lips and stains without names. He pulls at new technologies and old sayings, spotlighting how really we all just want to be loved. With its easy-to-read range of poetry from the risky experimental fling to the traditional rhythm of romance, this will be a book everyone can cling to, cry over and kiss the paper.
Haley Jenkins, Selcouth Station Press
Love in the age of Google Maps and Alexa, Arun Jeetoo counts the ways: tender, hopeless, hopeful . . .
Dr Louise Lee, Roehampton University
