Christian Gullette’s poetry collection Coachella Elegy is a striking portrait of an evolving California and its denizens.
Diane Seuss wrote of the book:
“There is something spare and trance-like in Christian Gullette’s mesmerizing Coachella Elegy. The source of the intensity, as in many of the landscapes Gullette describes, is gradation and precision, tremors of warning rather than full-on earthquakes. The poems’ structures, often unfolding in lean couplets or tercets, carry some of the compressive energy, exactness of detail, and coolness of haiku, or David Hockney swimming pools. The subjects are raw. A brother’s death. The speaker’s husband’s ocular cancer. The landscape’s diminishing wildness in a tremulous, post-AIDS California. I admire Coachella Elegy’s refinement, its nuanced approach to deep emotion. I feel the tremors in my bones.”
In his own words, here is Christian Gullette’s Book Notes music playlist for his poetry collection Coachella Elegy:
“Somewhere there’s music”
The title poem of Coachella Elegy opens with a speaker listening for the infamous music festival, but the bacchanalian pleasures of that gathering are out of earshot and tempered by the precarious expanse of desert. Not only does the collection open with music, but it closes with lovers extra in love as they drive in a convertible down the desert highway listening to the radio and the “song of summer is about addiction and love.”
That’s the Palm Springs experience for me. The closeness to destruction – much of it self-inflicted, environmental destruction – but also parties and naked poolside indulgences. Cocktails and toasts to the future, while always keeping an eye on the nearness of losing it all.
The speakers in these poems are dancing to music on a razor’s edge of life’s ruthlessness. They even dance unknowingly while someone drowns in a pool. Or dance melancholic in a sea of lonely, horny bodies seeking connection but also refuge from the heat.
There’s the music of hummingbird wings, so audible when in proximity. Also, inaudible butterfly wings, though their butterfly effect implies larger forces set in motion.
And then there are all the bees buzzing throughout the book.
I like to write to music. Some songs were on repeat. Some sting like the first time I heard them.
Lana Del Rey, “West Coast”
My endless summer anthem for so many of the poems in this book. Noirish, lusty, full of waves and fast cars and booze and lavish unrestraint.
Antônio Carlos Jobim and Astrud Gilberto, “Água De Beber”
From the opening poem’s invocation of mid-century style, no other musical genre infuses the DNA of this book more than samba and bossa nova. It’s a vibe everywhere in Coachella Elegy.
Roxy Music, “Same Old Scene”
Effortless sexy, suave chic with a 70s champagne luxury. That’s Roxy Music for me. But they also evoke a melancholic wistfulness that borders on the day-after-blowout sadz. Those qualities made this lesser-known Roxy gem the perfect soundtrack for my poem “Mid-Century Modern.”
Troye Sivan, “Wild”
In the poem “Quake,” I have fun poking fun at my husband’s well-known love for (and unrivaled knowledge about) politics but seeing him recline naked on a pool’s sun shelf always drives me wild.
Frank Ocean, “Pink + White”
The line “Up for air from the swimming pool” from Frank Ocean’s sultry and breezy “Pink + White” stays with me, and I wait for it every time.
Don Henley, “The Boys of Summer”
I can’t hear those high-hats and guitar reverb that opens “Boys of Summer” without thinking of the beaches and boardwalks of my childhood. “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”
Mazzy Star, “California”
You can tell by now that I can’t resist a moody, pared down beginning of a song, and this classic by Mazzy Star was another tune that defined my first Palm Springs poems.
Bananarama, “Cruel Summer”
The ORIGINAL cruel summer.
Savage Garden, “Truly Madly Deeply”
One of my brother Jeremy’s favorite songs. I needed to include a song that resonated for him.
Lana Del Rey, “American”
Sweeping, cinematic violins open this 50’s torch song sound with a modern beat overlayed with LDR’s classic drive-fast, fuck it, he drives me wild attitude. A soundtrack to my poem “Desert Ride”: “Everybody wants to go fast, but they can’t compare.”
Sufjan Stevens, “Visions of Gideon”
The bees in my poems always swarm when I play this one.
Chromatics, “Into the Black”
Their cover of Neil Young’s song instantly brings up so much for me. “Once you’re gone you can never come back.”
Chromatics, “Cherry”
So different than the previous Chromatics song, this one is the opposite of that dark mood: stylish, breezy, and all about love being complicated and obsessive and letting go.
St. Vincent, “Los Ageless”
Sacred and profane. Edgy, insatiable beats reeking of liquor and unquenched drive for fame and sex tinged with the irony of self-destructive duality of fake beauty and real beauty. As I say in one of my poems, “I’d follow L.A. boys anywhere.”
Poolside, “Harvest Moon”
The perfect upbeat ambient poolside dance track, especially if you’re lounging in a cabana, preferably with the privacy curtains closed (but, cheekily, not all the way closed). Whenever I listen to this, I can taste the Aperol in my spritz and smell the sunscreen.
Christian Gullette’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, the Poem-a-Day (Academy of American Poets), and The Yale Review. He has received financial support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. Christian completed his Ph.D. in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, and when notserving as the editor-in-chief of The Cortland Review, he works as a lecturer and translator. He lives in San Francisco.