Weblog: Advance Praise for "The Damaged Good"

photo: © 2006 Andrew Lambert

“G. Winston James exposes art to raw, human, male emotion. The Damaged Good juxtaposes sensual attraction against twisted obsession, all the while enticing the reader to travel on an intimate journey to the edge of insomnia and insanity. James shows us worlds through ears that no longer see pain as insignificant and eyes that refuse to hear excuses for mediocrity in self and relationships. The Damaged Good is a tale of new times in our history delivered with the intentionality and intensity of writers like Nikki Giovanni and Essex Hemphill. This collection is made of stuff the Dewey Decimal System was created to find.”
— Borris Powell, writer/performer

“What an awesome read! At times painful/upsetting. Brilliant!! Stark, raw, lusty, dangerous and intimate, G. Winston James gives us a gift. These poems fall like gems breaking away from the sky. This is our gift: to stare self in the unflinching mirror of truth, and fight back as if our lives depended on it.”
— Cheryl Boyce Taylor, author of Convincing the Body (Vintage Entity Press)

“Do not wonder where this poet has been. A growing season has surely covered the broken road of him. What bruise and scar left by the scratch and slap of his poems have surely been healed by their inspired stroke. Wonder instead if it is your name that appears in his ash, after the poet has washed his hands of you. Wonder if his pinky swear to your secret will hold. Wonder if your finger to his lips/his lisp will silence his fears. It is dangerous for a poet to have loved so much and to have remembered it all. Wonder what names, what dead will the paper cut of The Damaged Good bleed.”
— Marvin K. White, author of Last Rights and Nothin’ Ugly Fly (Redbone Press)