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Fighting Is Like a Wife - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Fighting Is Like a Wife

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In Fighting Is Like a Wife, Eloisa Amezcua uses striking visual poems to reconstruct the love story—and the tragedy—of two-time world boxing champion “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon and his first wife, Valorie Ginn.

Bobby took to fighting the way a surfer takes to water: the waves and crests, the highs and the pummeling lows. Valorie, as girlfriend, then wife, then mother of their children, was proud of Bobby and how he found a way out of the harsh world they were born into. But the brain-sloshing blows, the women, and the alcohol began to take their toll, and soon Bobby couldn’t hear her anymore. With her fate affixed to Bobby’s, and Bobby’s to the ring, Valorie sought her own way out of this dilemma.

Using haunting, visceral language to evoke the emotion of the fight, and incorporating direct quotations from sports commentators and Bobby himself, Fighting Is Like a Wife reveals how boxing, like love and poetry, can be brutal, vulnerable, and surprising.

ISBN-13: 9781566896344

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Publication Date: 04-12-2022

Pages: 88

Product Dimensions: 7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Eloisa Amezcua is from Arizona. She is the author of From the Inside Quietly (2018). A MacDowell fellow, Eloisa has published poems and translations in the New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

Tale of the Tape 1

Excerpts from a Post-Fight Interview: Bobby Chacon Lives for Tomorrow 2

Round 1 4

Valorie 5

Good Game of Catch 6

Round 2 7

Trouble 8

Valorie 9

Blood 10

Round 3 11

Valorie 13

Fighting Is Like a Wife 14

Round 4 16

Valorie 18

The Money 19

Valorie 20

We're Hoping 21

Round 5 22

Valorie 23

Some Fine Way to End a Crash Diet 24

Round 6: A Lot of Play on the Face of Bobby Chacon 25

Valorie 26

Round 7 27

Bobby v Valorie 28

Round 8 29

The Facts 30

Round 9: Addicted 31

Valorie 32

I Suppose She Thought I Had Something Going on the Side 33

Round 10 34

It Was Just an Opening 35

Round 11 36

She Said, He Said 37

In the Old Days 39

Round 12 40

Predicament 41

Valorie 42

The Facts 43

Valorie 44

Valorie 45

She Wanted Love 46

Valorie 47

Round 13 48

Valorie 50

They Told Me 51

Valorie 53

My Wife Died 54

Because I Wouldn't Quit 55

Valorie 56

Round 14 57

Valorie 58

[Retired] 59

Valorie 60

Round 15 61

Valorie 62

Defense 63

Valorie 64

Although There Could Always Be Hector Camacho 65

Valorie 66

Punch-Drunk 67

Notes 71

Citations 73

Acknowledgments 75