Valerie Loveland

As you might guess from the title, this book of poetry is really funny. The cover includes bands of color radiating from a giant “thumb's up.” It's hilarious. I always appreciate humor in poetry books, especially since poetry is so often dour.

The whole book is a series of prose poems, each one addressing a very specific group, like “Poem Addressing Kittens,” or “Poem Addressing Dictators,” or about the poet's feelings, like “Poem Addressing my Desperation” or “Poem Addressing Some of My Boring Wishes.” It is a great idea for a poetry book.

I saw videos of the poet reading some of the work online before the book came out and was excited to get my copy.

The book is good like the poems I saw online. The poems all have the same format, with the title addressing someone or something, and the poems are almost always prose poems. I think there are one or two that are very short and have line breaks.

The only thing I didn't like about the book is the poet mentions poetry promotion in too many of the poems. He very often mentions wanting a tenure teaching position, to get invited to a read, or someone buying his book. I know it is a joke that making money with poetry is kind of hopeless, but sometimes it really does feel like the poet is seriously asking us to do these things for him.

I also wish there was a little less cursing in the poem. I think poems rarely need it.

My favorites in the book:

Poem Addressing People Reading This Under Water

Poem Addressing Kittens

Poem Addressing Conspiracy Theorists

Poem Addressing the Very Numerous Instants That Cling Together, Forming an Enormous Rope of Life That Is Goofy and Strange (Anti has more poems from the book)

I am a fan of Sloat's poetry, so I really liked In the Voice of a Minor Saint. I feel like each poem has been put together so carefully, down to the sound of each syllable and the placement of each line break, you end up seeing something totally ordinary (like weather or nature) seem amazing. It's like Sloat arranged something special for her readers.

I liked the titles of the poems, and there was a variety to the stanza breaks. I was glad to see ghazals in the book, which were done in a way that the form doesn't get in the way of the poem.

I wish I could have had more poems in the book. Luckily, Sloat is widely published online, so it is easy to find her work.

My favorites in the book:

Folk Art

Ghazal with Heavenly Bodies

Naked, Come Shivering

God Have Pity on the Smell of Gasoline (page 55)

Some chapbooks feel like they are not very substantial because of their small size. If they have a specific subject matter, some feel like they had trouble trying to fill a whole book of poems about one subject. Lasky's chapbook Tourmaline doesn't feel like this. Her book feels solid, just like her full length books. The poems are just as strong as her other work.

The poems in this book are shorter than her usual poems, and the language seems a little tighter. Lasky's poems are usually a bit on the looser side (which is part of their charm).

As usual with Lasky's work, every poem except for one is one stanza.

The chapbook has similar themes to her usual work: her family, love, writing.

Lasky's poems are really good when heard, so I included her Pennsound audio page.

My favorites in the book:

I Hate Irony

It Feels Like Love

I Wonder About Cars (second poem on page)

Fireshower

I enjoyed Denison's [b:Recovering the Body 2642195 Recovering the Body Nicole Cartwright Denison http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1202156370s/2642195.jpg 2666931]. The poems had a lot of detail and had a range of subjects, although a lot of them had a darkness to them (no surprise with a title like that).The poems were broken into lines of differing, usually regular stanzas but there were a couple other types thrown in, including a poem in the shape of a saddle.Her titles were interesting.My favorites from the book (can't find many because a lot of these have been published by Sundress Publications. They have been hacked and are still organizing their archives):It Is EnoughRecovering the BodyHorseback GirlsZip Me Down

This book was fabulous. There are so many poems written about birds in the world, so when I got this chapbook, I wasn't sure if this was going to be like something I'd read before.

There weren't that many poems about birds in the book, and the ones that were about birds were interesting and unusual. The images were gorgeous, and it was easy to stay with the poems all the way through because they were so well written. All of the titles were great, and a lot of them add layers to the poem instead of just naming the poem.

The only things i didn't like about the book were little picky things that don't have to do with the poems (the book font, the cover art), except I didn't think the title of the chapbook matched the poems in the book.

My favorites from the book (it is a shame that I couldn't find any of her poems online. They're great.):

Our Last Day

35 Cents in Nickels

Three Songs for Lucy Audubon

Bloodstars

I didn't actually know what a chainsaw bear was before reading this book (in case you don't know too, they are tall bear statues made out of wood, carved with chainsaws and painted. They are usually at resort type places to sell to tourists).

The poetry collection is called The Chainsaw Bears, and it has 16 poems, all of them with the title “The Chainsaw Bears.” The book has a table of contents with all the same poem title listed over and over–funny!I thought this was an unusual subject for a whole chapbook, but it works. As someone who personifies objects, these mostly sad poems got to me. I am actually worried about these bear statues.

All the poems in the book have two line stanzas.

I don't know how to list my favorite poems from the book.

Here are a couple of the poems in Anti

Here is one in No Tell Motel

I liked this book so much I read it in 2 big reading sessions. I started it on the train back from NJ. The book I was reading was in an awkward place in my bag, so I pulled out my back up book and started reading.

It is nice to find a new author I like. Now I can check out more of his books, I know he has a bunch of them. I'm looking forward to reading them.

Robbins is a fun writer. The only bad thing I have to say is his writing is a bit like Kurt Vonnegut (who I think is better), but the similarity isn't overwhelming. Robbins writes more about sex than Vonnegut.

I follow Christine Hamm's blog because she often posts her new poems and they are always intriguing, and unique. She is a talented, interesting poet.[b:The Animal Husband 4713980 The Animal Husband Christine Hamm http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1221778033s/4713980.jpg 4778380] is no different. The poems are about animals and food, which I thought was a strange combination for a whole chapbook of poems. They are also two subjects that are close to my heart, as someone who has had weight issues my whole life, and also someone who has a soft spot for animals. The poems are strange, but Hamm makes it work really well. Overall, they are not as unusual as her current work. The poems feel like they are assembled with a careful hand.I was worried when I saw the sad monkey on the cover that the poems would be something I wouldn't want to read, since I am sensitive about animals, but there wasn't any cruelty in the book.Hamm has a wide variety of line breaks and stanza breaks in the book. There are prose poems, regular stanza breaks, irregular breaks. She only has a couple poems that are just one stanza. She breaks everything in an appealing way that suits the lines and poems. I am going to pick up more of Hamm's poetry books. Her blog is worth following. My favorite poems in the book:Raised by WolvesIt's hard to diet.Toilets I Have KnownThe Transparent Dinner (It's called Snow White's Apple on this webpage)

I liked this chapbook a lot. I am going to see if Kristy Odelius has any other books out. Don't be fooled by the cute octopus? on the front of the book–the poems are dark and complicated.

The language in these poems is rich. I can tell Odelius took care deciding which words to use. The poetry is

The titles are also good, and they stuck in my mind after I was done reading the book.

She has a couple poetry series in the book: Virgins of Chicago and Dislocation Lesson. I don't like them as much as the other poems in the book, although they are still good.

She has every type of stanza break: one stanza, stanzas all the same line length, lines that have breaks in the middle of them, lines that aren't all justified left.

My favorites in the book:

Third Grade

I Call You Darling 7 Ways

Aubaude, Big Eyes

How

I picked up [b:Your Name is the Only Freedom 7284063 Your Name is the Only Freedom Janaka Stucky http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1260208412s/7284063.jpg 8501850] when I heard Janaka Stucky feature at a poetry reading. He described these poems as love letters to the goddess Kali. Kali is the goddess of time and change, and is portrayed as dark and violent. (She wears a garland of human heads).This unusual chapbook is very dark, and often sexual. I am not used to seeing these two things mixed together in poems. I liked how different the poems were from the norm, it kind of felt like this was a spellbook.Stucky has a series of poems in the chapbook called Destroy song, and those poems usually contain one thought, sometimes repeated, sometimes spread out among the short lines and stanzas.The poems were all fairly short and the line breaks were sometimes regular, sometimes not. The lines were short, and so were the stanzas. Stucky also breaks the lines and puts them all around the page, not just left justified.My favorite poems from the collection Then Mercy Will ComeDestroy SongBask in the Eternal Flame of the Eye of the ImmortalDeath does not Diminish Me

I felt kind of disconnected from these poems, until I read the end of the book when I read this: “This collection, was culled by erasure from a long non-fiction piece entitled ‘The Interpreter' by John Colapinto, originally printed in The New Yorker on April 16, 2007.”

Writing poems this way is so hard to me, and I am impressed whenever anyone is able to do it and have it sound like a poem at all. I read through the chapbook again and liked it more.

A Tree Structure Splits into Two Others This also includes others from the chapbook.

I've Got to Stop Saying, “Look”

Have You Met This Man?

I am not going to review this chapbook because I already reviewed the poems–they also appear in [b:Hard Reds 2664049 Hard Reds Brandi Homan http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1201326014s/2664049.jpg 2689277]. One thing I will say is the poems seem to work together as a more cohesive book in Hard Reds.

I liked the Trouble section of this book more than the Honey section. The Honey section was lighter, and had more rhyming. I enjoyed Trouble because the poems were more twisted, more dark. The line breaks were more creative, and non-trational. There were spaces in the middle of some of the lines (see the link for Prison Dentist).

I like the subject matter, sideshow workers, men with hooks. I even liked her poems about gambling, and I am not into gambling at all.

Some of my favorites in the book:

The Last Big Bet

The Man with a Hook

I Have Married a Crow

Prison Dentist

I group Sandra Beasley's poems together with Julianna Baggott and Aimee Nezhukumatathil–they write accessible poems that I really like to read. They are poems I would give to someone who wasn't into poetry, or someone just starting to read poems. They are straightforward, easy to understand, but still really good. I think these poets are great for poetry.

Beasley said in her book that a lot of the poems were written during NaPoWriMo. I saw a lot of them posted to her blog every day as she was writing them. I was so impressed by her poems, I tried NaPoWriMo myself the next year (I do it every year now. I love the weird poems that happen when I am forced to write a poem every day). In some ways you can tell that they were done during NaPoWriMo: there are a lot of poems with similar titles (The Piano Speaks, The Sand Speaks, The Platypus Speaks, etc.) There are also a lot of repeating lines in the poems. I am sensitive about repetition, and I don't think it was overused in these poems.

All the poems in the book are either one stanza, or are broken into stanzas of the same length. I think there is one or two that breaks this rule, but will have another orderly method of breaking lines (three line stanza followed by a two line stanza throughout the poem).

My favorites from this book:

Unit of Measure

The Piano Speaks

You Were You

Proposal

I read Red Becomes the Wolf on Verse Daily awhile ago, and I liked it so much I picked up [b:Becoming the Villainess 337534 Becoming the Villainess Jeannine Hall Gailey http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173855246s/337534.jpg 327951]. I was really looking forward to reading it because I love villains, and I had heard that all the characters in the poems were women. I really enjoyed Gailey's askew fairy tales. All the poems were about various women or girl characters in fairy tales or archetypes.I have seen these characters redone before but I like Gailey's versions–they have an edge. They talk like believable people. I liked how much variety there was in the poems' subject matter, yet somehow it was all tied together. I was a relief to hear all these characters who were always at the mercy of villains, or hoping to be saved by men have strong voices in this book. The women in this book are how I wish all those characters were written in their original stories.The language in the poetry is tight and strong. There is not any fat to trim. The stanza breaks were pretty orderly, and almost always had stanzas that were the same amount of lines. The lines were broken at the ends of sentences or the middles, usually ending with a strong word.When Red Becomes the WolfSpy GirlsAlice in Darkness (one up from the bottom of the page)In the Faces of Lichtenstein's Women

After reading Homan's current work published online, I didn't expect these poems to be personal (or seem personal), and I expected to see a lot more prose poems.These poems are friendly and straightforward. Each poem tells you a story. Judging by the poems, I assume Homan comes from a similar background to me and it feels like I am visiting home. The poems are comforting.I didn't like the series of poems about red dresses called The Red Dress Centos. I think they could have been combined into one poem.I liked her titles and they usually added something to enhance the poems.The book is in sections, and I like the second section (Two Kinds of Arson) best. I know Homan has a chabook of the same name. I have the chapbook and plan on reading it soon. I also have to pick up [b:Bobcat Country 6952843 Bobcat Country Brandi Homan http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1254934457s/6952843.jpg 7187681]–I would love to see what Homan is writing now.My favorites in the book:Self Portrait in Blueshift (Bottomr of page)Ode to the Barycenter of a Binary Star (last poem)LabradorPut Your Hands on the Plow and Hold on

I never answered the question: Who is Zorba? Sometimes Pafunda writes Zorba as a he, sometimes as a she. It is interesting but I feel like I should know the answer by the end.The language in [b:My Zorba 3222295 My Zorba Danielle Pafunda http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1209523460s/3222295.jpg 3256350] is lush and creative. She has a series of poems in the book that are letters to people and things: “Dear Grandmother,” “Dear Debacler,” “Dear classroom, no windows, two slider projectors, humming.” I liked these, and they almost always included Zorba somehow. There are very few poems that don't include Zorba at all, and I miss him/her when he isn't in the poems.I really like the mystery of the book, but I wish I could have decided who Zorba was by the end. I think I may be wrong trying to figure out who Zorba is. It might be one of those universals that poets use, that morphs as the poems require their subjects to. However, it seems like Zorba is so close, so specific in the poems, I want to know everything.There were a few pop culture references in the poems, but there were not enough of them, so when a poem had a pop culture reference, it seemed to stick out a little too much.The poems were broken into lines, but they looked like prose poems. Sometimes the stanzas were broken across pages. I thought this was a fun idea, but there were times I wasn't sure which stanzas belonged together. There is no table of contents, so I couldn't confirm.Even though I felt like I was at a loss defining Zorba, the poems were beautiful, and I cared what was happening. I really liked them. I am going to keep reading it, and maybe I'll figure it out, or maybe I'll get over wanting Zorba to be someone specific.My favorite poems in the bookMy Sea LegsDear Pearce & Pearce Inc.A Second Opinion is Sought (At the bottom)A Parsimonious Holiday (Second from bottom)

I bought [b:Black Life 7091797 Black Life Dorothea Lasky http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275655206s/7091797.jpg 7348127] soon after it was published in April. I was looking forward to it since I am a fan of Awe. I liked Black Life even better. It is even more cute and charming. All the poems in the new book are at the level of the best ones in the first book. These are more complex, and the subjects change more in this book. I like how Lasky isn't afraid to sound sincere. I saw one of the poems in the book in The New Yorker, and I was happily surprised. Her poems have a cuteness to them that you don't see a lot it serious poetry. It is one of the main reasons I like the poems–they are really good at being themselves. There is more than one poem in the book about being attracted to weirdos (A favorite subject of mine), and the poet also mentions a lot of specific names of people. I haven't looked any of them up (I wrote this part of the review offline), but I am going to look them up when I can go back online.Her poetry is unique. You can identify a Lasky poem without seeing the byline. They are vivacious and seem simple on the surface. Her titles are just there. I don't feel like they do a lot to enhance the poems. Her poems are all single stanza poems. The book has huge print, which I like because tiny letters strain my eyes. I also think the large print suits the poems. It reminds me of Lasky's reading style, which is loud and seems “large.”My favorites in the book:TornadoMe and the OttersThat One Was The Oddest One (more than half way down the page)Fat

This book was so well written, but it was torture to watch the the main character destroy himself and everyone around him.

I think this book could help people to see the kinds of things someone might have to deal with when realizing they are gay, although I hope, especially now that it is 2010, that being gay is no longer a thing to hate yourself for.

I first found out about Vera Pavlova's poetry because I went to a poetry event in Cambridge and didn't know anything about the poet. She recited her poems in Russian and her husband translated the poems into English for the audience. It was so nice to hear her read them in the poems' native language, and the two of them had great chemistry and it was a great reading.

Pavlova's poems are short. I read the whole book of 100 poems in one sitting. Sometimes they are simple, but they are always thought-provoking, and moving. The poems are vivacious. I do feel like I am missing something by reading them without Pavlova here, but it isn't because the poems are not complete, it is just because hearing her read added so much to them.

This is the only book that was translated to English. I hope the book does well so they will translate more of them. I'd love to read more. I also look forward to her reading in the area again–I will definitely go see her.

Almost none of Pavlova's poems have titles. Her poems are so short, a title may be as long as some of the poems. I feel like a poet misses something important when they leave off a title.

My parents were virgins

I broke your heart. It is at the top of the page, just one line, after it says “translated by Steven Seymour”.

Only she who has breast fed

Multiplying in a column M by F

I've been looking forward to this book since I read some of Crawford's poetry in Action Yes (one of my favorite online magazines). Her book didn't disappoint. The poems were somewhat different than the types of poems that are being published by Crawford right now, because the poems in [b:The Haunted House 7549885 The Haunted House Marisa Crawford http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275942043s/7549885.jpg 9843034] are all focused to the same subject: being a preteen/young teen. Because of the subject matter, it is hard not to compare [b:The Haunted House 7549885 The Haunted House Marisa Crawford http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275942043s/7549885.jpg 9843034] with Karyna McGlynn's [b:I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl: Poems 6535983 I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl Poems Karyna McGlynn http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266748839s/6535983.jpg 6728148] (which is one of my favorite books, period). They both write about their (and my) teen years, but the main difference is Crawford has mostly the lighter side and McGlynn writes about the pitch black side. Both books are great.Crawford's poems are almost all prose poems, which I think suit her subject matter and writing style. I like the prose poems better than the few poems that she wrote with line breaks.I like Crawford's titles, just reading them makes me feel nostalgic (“And I Will Always Love You” and “The Cute Beatle”), or made me laugh (“Riding in Cars with Monsters” and “Yum, Poison Apple”).She uses a lot of specific names when she writes, and I feel like these are real stories and real people. Every reader wants to feel like they are watching something real. She has a lot of poems about Emily Dickinson (she is her descendant and also went to school in Amhearst) and talks about her as if she is a friend at school or a cousin around the same age as she is in these poems.My favorites in this book:Me Without MakeupValentine's DayRiding in Cars with MonstersUnder the Evergreens

I liked the poems by Christle that I've read online, and her book was as good as the online poems. They are charming, funny. I wish she had another book so I could read another by her. She wrote about some topics that I was also interested in.

She has two longer poems in the book, made up of 5 or more parts. I often feel like long poems could be reduced or condensed into smaller poems, but I didn't feel like that about these long poems. Christle writes strong first lines and endings to her poems, and also interesting titles.

I have been thinking about stanza breaks lately, so I am going to try and mention them in my reviews. Christle's poems are all one stanza, with just a few that have 2 line stanzas. There is only one poem with irregular stanzas lengths.

My favorite poems in this book:

It's not a Good Shortcut if Everyone Dies

The Handsome Man

Acorn Duly Crushed

Onward and Onward

Torched Verse Ends is a fun book. I got Schroeder's book because I liked his poems that I would see online. His style of writing is unique–there is more wordplay than usual, and the subjects are about things that I don't usually see in poetry (video games, bars, pool). I like seeing something different sometimes. I also like when a poet has a style that is unique enough that I can tell who wrote a poem without reading the author's name. The poems are packed tight, without making you feel exhausted afterward, and are smart without making you feel stupid. They are friendly.

Another thing I really liked about the collection are Schroeder's titles. I think they are some of the best titles I've read.

My favorites from the book

Without Glasses (last one on the page)

These 3 are from his online chapbook, 90% of Everything

Fifteen Ways to Finish Fish (page 10)

Bad Nature Lover (page 6)

52 Pickup Lines (page 15)

My friend Allison said that she would rather have her eyes poked out than read this book. I recently picked it up so I figured I would read it and see what I thought of it.

I didn't like it either. It wasn't bad enough to make me poke my eyes out, but I don't like fishing, baseball. I didn't like the way the narrator talked to himself, I didn't like the way he and the boy talked. It seemed like they weren't actually talking to each other, they were explaining to the reader what their relationship was, and their history.

I usually like Hemingway's writing, but I just couldn't connect with this book. He is usually much better.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is the first Ashbery book I've read. I heard audio recordings of a couple of his poems, but never read any of his books.

Ashbery has a reputation for being hard. I see why! The first time I read through the book, I didn't start understanding the poems at all until about half way through the book, yet still liked them. When I read the book again, I understood it a lot more (but not totally) and really liked the poems. It is a weird feeling, liking poems while they didn't really make sense.

One of his poems “In the Tomb of Stuart Merrill” includes a quote: “I have become attracted to your style. You seem to possess within your work an air of total freedom of expression and imagery, somewhat interesting and puzzling. After I read one of your poems, I'm always tempted to read and reread it. It seems that my inexperience holds me back from understanding your meanings.” And continues: “I really would like to know what it is you do to ‘magnetize' your poetry, where the curious reader, always a bit puzzled, comes back for a clearer insight.” I want to know the answer to this question too! I am looking forward to reading more Ashbery books to find out!

My favorite poems in this book (While I was looking for poems online, I found out that you can get Ashbery ringtones!):

City Afternoon

Fear of Death

Forties Flick (half way down the page)

Mixed Feelings