TOO MUCH TONGUE - Adrienne Marie Barrios & Leigh Chadwick
ABOUT THE BOOK
Adrienne Barrios and Leigh Chadwick became friends on the internet. They live 939 miles apart. They found each other’s writing and liked each other’s writing. Then they started writing together. Too Much Tongue is a series of prose poems in which the writers imagine themselves into each other’s lives, stretching and bending language into constant delight and surprise, taking turns sometimes so absurd they might float into the air at any moment if they weren’t so grounded to the visceral need for human connection and recognition.
PRAISE FOR TOO MUCH TONGUE
“In Too Much Tongue, Leigh Chadwick and Adrienne Barrios created a literary adventure forged in genuine friendship. These poems draw on the ordinary to deliver the transcendent. Like Thelma and Louise, but the highway is a wormhole through your heart.”
—Mark Leidner, author of Returning the Sword to the Stone
“In Too Much Tongue, Adrienne Barrios and Leigh Chadwick carve out an unprecedented intimate space, one in which they are both separate entities and two halves of a singular voice presenting a startlingly accurate picture of our current human condition. These poems flit between hope and despair, yearning and satisfaction. They demonstrate what it might mean to stay sane during a global pandemic of illness and solitude. In this collaborative collection, Barrios and Chadwick are just like the rest of us—wandering into an endless dark with a flashlight, hoping that whatever we find is better than what we’re trying to escape.”
—Taylor Byas, author of Bloodwarm, Associate Editor of The Cincinnati Review
“Too Much Tongue reads like a psychological fairy tale in which two siblings navigate a forest of thoughts, uncertain as to whether they are lost or found—a journey into the psyches of wondering and wandering minds contemplating every meaning of existence. This collection of prose poetry is full of dreams and realities, where one blends into the other to cause a surreal state of beautiful sadness. There’s a push and a pull between the narrators—sometimes a push and a push; others, a pull and a pull—and it’s through these interactions that a quiet combustion occurs, giving us worlds upon worlds of light in all its variations. Both fierce and tender, Too Much Tongue is a gorgeous spectrum of words.”
—Shome Dasgupta, author of Tentacles Numbing
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Adrienne Marie Barrios is autistic and has an extensive collection of vintage and vintage-reproduction dresses, shoes, sweaters, accessories, and bone china teacups that she actually drinks from. Adrienne Marie Barrios is editor-in-chief of Reservoir Road Literary Review and CLOVES Literary. In addition to being co-author of Too Much Tongue, Adrienne Marie Barrios is the author of her debut solo collection We Don’t Know That This Is Temporary (Redacted Books, 2023). Adrienne Marie Barrios’s work has appeared in numerous journals, including trampset, Passages North, Rejection Letters, Stanchion Zine, and HAD, among others, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction. Adrienne Marie Barrios edits award-winning novels and short stories and is currently at work on both of those very things and so much more. Adrienne Marie Barrios can be found online at adriennemariebarrios.com.
Leigh Chadwick is the author of Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey Books, 2022) and Sophomore Slump (Malarkey Books, 2023). Leigh Chadwick's poetry has appeared in Salamander, Hobart, Passages North, Pithead Chapel, The Indianapolis Review, and No Contact, among others. Leigh Chadwick is the executive editor of Redacted Books and is a regular contributor at Olney Magazine, where she conducts the "Mediocre Conversations" interview series. Leigh Chadwick is currently at work on a novel. Leigh Chadwick can be found online at www.leighchadwick.com.
BOOK INFO
Pub Date: November 22, 2022
Print Length: 86 pages
Dimensions: 5.25 x 8 inches
ISBN: 978-1-957392-11-0