It is so refreshing to discover a poet as rapturously rich with magic as Logan February. In Painted Blue with Saltwater, the poet swims with sea monsters, becomes a feather, becomes a window, becomes a safe house by the sea. This is the great pleasure of Logan’s poetry—whatever lamentable situation the speaker finds himself in, there is always a way to shapeshift back toward the light: “Because I am / void & because I am vast & because / I am ocean.” What welcome gifts, these gorgeous poems.
—Kaveh Akbar
Saltwater, ghost-filled air, the fires of becoming a young queer man, and the dirt, the dirt of searching for home, for a name, and another name. Logan February’s Painted Blue with Saltwater feels at once ancient / elemental and utterly new / refusing to order the world in the same or any manner. This collection bends and stretches lyric language to show us how “a house is a box of doors, / of openings, of wounds,” how the family’s house is far from a heaven where “they have heterosexual sons & / perfectly grilled fish.” Logan February’s speaker is both drawn to and skeptical of what this world has given him. He wants “to talk to shovels / and ask them to be gentle.” He wants to know “do knives know what they are used for.” This is a collection that will inhabit your bones and rearrange your sky.
—Chen Chen
The magic in Logan February’s Painted Blue with Saltwater manifests from a needed eagerness. Sketches of boyhood & body cannot be negotiated without a level of antagonism & February’s collection does so beautifully. It’s the world that Painted Blue creates—filled with wings & air & ghosts & dust—that transmits the delicate yet heartening sentiment key to the work. February’s voice is salient & sweet; carving out much-needed space for young Black queer poets.
—Jayy Dodd
Painted Blue with Saltwater is a self-portrait. It is opening a box of trinkets and knowing who the owner is based on what you find. It is running your finger across a canvas and feeling the thick chunks of paint, imagining exactly how the artist moved their brush. February balances precision and thoughtful curation with a breathtaking transparency, from which we learn that to be vulnerable is to be strong. These poems are stunning. Read this book and then read it again.
—Olivia Gatwood
Logan February was born in Anambra, Nigeria, in 1999 and grew up in Ibadan, Oyo. He is a singer-songwriter, a poet, a procrastinating novelist, and a very average psychology major at the University of Ibadan. He is a queer and happy-ish Nigerian owl who likes pizza & typewriters, and he lives in Ibadan, where he is lucky enough to have the greatest friends. He is co-editor-in-chief of The Ellis Review. He is also the author of How to Cook a Ghost (Glass Poetry Press, 2017). Please say hello @loganfebruary.
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