Hell Yeah

Hell Yeah, Rachelle Toarmino’s highly anticipated second collection of poems, is an intimate, ecstatic examination of the wonders of common speech. As automatic and wholehearted as a hell yeah between friends, the poems interject into various sites of the interpersonal—from a work email and doctor’s office to a long-distance call and Yahoo! Answers rabbit hole—to measure the strange, mundane, and ancient ways we relate and respond to one another. In an alternating rhythm of logic and lyric, doubt and doubling down, Toarmino regifts plain and inherited language to arrive at a theory for familiarity and something like faith: how we know what we know and why we share what we know. With curiosity, generosity, oddball intellect, and charm, Hell Yeah captures that gut impulse to feel yes, say so, and sing it.