Holy Land

Rauan Klassnik was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. After moving to Dallas and then dropping out of college he traded sports and gaming cards, beanie babies, pogs and memorabilia. Now he spends most of his time in Mexico looking after birds and dogs with his wife Edith. His poems have appeared in The Mississippi Review, The North American Review, The Kennesaw Review, The Santa Clara Review, MiPoesias, No Tell Motel, Caesura, Sentence, Tex!, The Avatar Review, Contrary, Borderlands, Pilot Poetry, Poemeleon, The Red River Review, Hunger Mountain, Sleepingfish, Handsome, Sea Stories, Front Porch, and The DMQ Review.

"Rauan Klassnik’s Holy Land is not a book for the faint of heart. His poems—dreamlike fables that conflate the domestic and quotidian with the dangerous and the perverse—are bathed in tears and blood: a trip to the bank becomes a journey to Auschwitz; bullets and gore find equivalence in rivers, birds and lush grass. In Klassnik’s startling vision, 'the world knows what you want, and it knows what you need. It brings you bodies. And it brings you a gun.'” —Gary Young