Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. "Charles Flowers' long-awaited collection, THE IDEA OF HIM, evokes the implacable power of desire, from its earliest appearance in boyhood to the ache of adult experience. These wrenchingly honest, beautifully felt poems make clear nothing less than the soul hunger that lies deep in the body's dreams."--Joan Larkin

"In THE IDEA OF HIM, this first volume of superb lyric testimonies, we meet the adolescent male body awakening into a forbidden sexuality, then its adult counterpart abandoned by casual encounters, aggrieved by this constancy of loss, barely sustained by a wish to regain connection with paradise through the meager portions of love afforded by ordinary life...THE IDEA OF HIM shines with angelic orders of extraordinary love."--Garrett Hongo

"In THE IDEA OF HIM, Charles Flowers is true to the lifelong, unrelenting force of desire that can emerge any place, anywhere--the longing that makes others 'instruments of safety and respite,' and also offers the exquisite pain and beauty of 'the pull of flesh toward flesh.' If you have known desire's 'strange closeness'--in the flesh or in the mind alone--you will find yourself somewhere in these poems."--Minnie Bruce Pratt