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again of poor Gregor and
was grateful that they just
don’t get as big as that."
These poems examine life's harshness with keen observation and clinical detail. Poems like "cages" pose thought-provoking philosophical ideas about identity, the masks an individual wears, and when they wear them. "WoundExitz" is only two lines long and beautifully brief, but it tackles the concept of how modern society takes an irrevocable toll on people's well-being and happiness. "narrating humanoid conflict conjectures" fabulously invokes Kafka, as do many of these poems, and utilizes surreal, absurdist imagery to challenge the poem's audience linguistically, conceptually, and intellectually. "ancient religionist love poem" is sexy and hedonistic: "for God said don't spill it / on the ground fool, / learn something." These poems are delightfully wrong in all the right contemplations of love, sex, religion, existence, and being.
Raw, rowdy, and raucous, this poem collection challenges the fringes of the mind as well as the fringes of the page. The book's audience will immediately notice the variety of forms, ranging from experimental indenting and spacing to fluid, sweeping prose poems. The speaker of the poems is evidently well-read and, moreover, has lived a well-lived life. Like Bukowski's verses, these poems often rely on direct language. However, they often take a Kafka-esque turn as they venture down abstract paths that jar, shock, and awe. They display a magic fusion of experience, existentialism, travel, and philosophical thought. This book is psychologically sweeping and darkly magnificent—a true gift to the world of avant-garde and experimental poetry. For those whose roads have been hard and weary and a bit like Kerouac's On the Road, this is the perfect poetry companion.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review