Praise for Character Flaws

So much messy, hungry, simply undeniable life blazes across these pages. Here is a mind always at work, which is to say, always at play. Here is a body so embracing of love and desire, “you need not touch me because with you i touch myself.” Flawed and fumbling, the speaker of these poems is also fiercely tender, feverishly curious, and very funny. Notice, says one poem, “his stupid kissable mouth hanging open / though not in judgment.” For what is judgment next to astonishment?”

-Chen Chen, author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

 “In Character Flaws, Eben Bein plumbs the depths of human emotion and fragility. From the hidden desire of a youthful crush in “Mouse King,” to “Last Laugh Before the Break,” a drive through the vast, sweltering Arizona desert with the needle on “E,” Bein beautifully contrasts the deepest longings—his and ours—with a constant hope for better days yet to come.”

-Andre F. Peltier, author of Poplandia

 “Character Flaws is a conversation that's both being spoken to you but you're also overhearing from afar—"the blast can be heard for miles”. You are called to listen with your whole body, intensely, and then you are in the poems walking around the "one pair of pants / shed like a snake skin / atop one pair of shoes." These poems turn your emotions—casual, chatty, lounging and intimate: "will it just end like it started / in a language / I have only begun to learn".” -John Compton, author of the castration of a minor god