I Never Understood Religion
Until I Learned Your Name
I Never Understood Religion Until I Learned Your Name is a poetry collection written from the long-distance heart. Spanning across the pond and through celestial miles, Hunter Hazelton unravels a semi-autobiographical exploration of first queer love, the intensity of desire, and the existence of God in a heteronormative world. Despite miles of longing, these poems chronologize a story of faith, tragedy, and self-exploration that spans any place and time.
praise for I Never Understood Religion Until I Learned Your Name
“…there was no coming out of the water/once submerged,” writes Hunter Hazelton. Submerged “in the silent violence/of heartbreak,” Hazelton questions whether Paradise exists—if it is touchable, and for how long. The speaker instantiates this Paradise coequally from the stage of his life and the life of his mind. He is not alone in his existential turbulence; rather, he conceives of his audience as macabre bystanders in parked cars: “They, too, want a show." And it is a rapturous show indeed with punctured wrists, splattered walls, and a pigeon’s crushed head. The questing is grisly, even beastly. This is a book for anyone who is wide-eyed, taunted by the prospect of their own salvation.
— Andie Francis, author of I’m Trying to Show You My Matchbook Collection
Hazelton’s poems weave their way through the heavy narrative of the heart like a Lana Del Rey playlist, a self-immolating soundtrack of queer love that speeds along highways and traverses the globe, gestates inside classical cities and rooms with wine-stained rugs. His poetic-prayers convey an erotic desire that’s constantly threatened by society and the speaker’s own trepidation, perhaps the fear of spontaneous combustion, a crucifixion at the intersection of desire and disconnect, which seems the perfect metaphor for the contemporary world. Truly a remarkable debut collection!
— Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD), Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ