A. Loudermilk utilizes confessional, persona, and third-person poems throughout this intimate yet socially conscious first collection. Strange Valentine is an indictment of love, fixating on the paranoid relationship between body and state, on the dangerous relationship between family history and sexual history, and on the elusive relationship between gender and sexuality—specifically as experienced in the working-class towns of the southernmost Midwest. Riding highly crafted rhythms in sound, line, and invented form, Loudermilk’s multivoiced storytelling resounds with the characters and heartbreaks of the heartland.