[01/15/26] Mobilio, Albert: Beginning of the Hollow

Black Square Editions, paperback

Publication Date: January 15, 2026

Publisher Marketing: 

I’m sorry. It’s impossible to characterize Beginning of the Hollow. In the early pages, Albert Mobilio lavishes on us the spellbinding pacing of acrobatic, recursive sentences—aka his “narrative difficulty”—which, though they include riveting observational details, “strange turns” of syntax, understated humor, and a pentathlon of competing dictions—feel somehow like CAT scans of the soul. Then there are softly spoken introspective poems and, toward the end, a long sequence of short gnomic declarations and fragments so strikingly various in tone, so linguistically alive and entertaining, they might be renga composed by some hard-boiled detective and a lovelorn Buddhist philosopher. Charged with vivacity, totally “unbuttoned,” psychologically alarming, and fashioned with a dexterity few poets can match, Mobilio’s Beginning of the Hollow comes fully loaded. And here you’ll find even “better words than the words/ that make people do things.” —Forrest Gander