Valerie Loveland

I really liked this. I think that I enjoyed The Book of Frank more, but this was also really good. I had no interest in going to Graceland before but I do now!

There is so much to like about this book! It's so unique–I haven't read anything like this before.

I love how alive these poems are.

I liked this book's perspective of overeating from a science/history point of view. Glad I had to read this for school, because I never would have picked up this book because of the title.

The Concord library has a bunch of very old Patchen books and I love borrowing them even though I have the complete Patchen poems. I like seeing how these smaller collections were arranged, and I like that they are all old and are slim hardbacks. The book layouts are always nice to look at too.

As usual, I love this Patchen book. I've been obsessed with Patchen since I found out about him over the summer (Thanks American Poetry Review!) His poems are creative and surprising. They always feel super sincere to me. I just like his attitude. Diane DiPrima described it as “tender silliness,” which sounds exactly right to me.

These are all prose poems. My least favorite part of the book is the two poems done in a series. I didn't think they were as compelling as the rest. It felt like they were broken into pieces, and should have been just put together instead of separated into different poems.

The titles are usually interesting and often are the first half of the first sentence of the poem.

My favorites in the book:
Delighting in Bluepink

Sturdy Legs, That (It is actually on the next page down. I can't figure out how to get it to point at the right page. I wasn't going to include it because of the weird link, but it is probably my favorite.)

Evidence? What Evidence?

In Order To

My review is going to be published in Scrambler Magazine, so I'll post the link once it comes out.

My friend described this as “absolutely bonkers”

I had a hard time finishing this book because every time I picked it up, I would become super angry and had to stop reading. I decided it was too good to give up on, so I had to finish the rest of it in one long reading session.

This book is really disturbing, and I am astounded that this is considered a young adult novel.

I really liked how this collection was only 3 poets so I could get a good sampling of their work. I thought all the poetry was really good, but Kim Hyesoon stood out to me. I liked her poems the best. They were the most surreal.

I liked how the women poets defied what a Korean woman poet was “supposed to write about” (according to the intro, they should be “gentle and subservient”) To me these poems feel absolutely open, and unafraid. They wrote about rapes, abortions, family, suicide, death. It felt like they didn't shy away from any subjects.

I couldn't find any English translations of anyone's poetry except for Kim Hyesoon (I guess other people really like her too). I am going to pick up more of Hyesoon's work.

All three poets vary in the quality of their titles and vary in the styles of their line breaks.

I can find a lot of Hyesoon's work online (It is worth looking at!) I can't find any from the collection. The other two poets, I couldn't find their poetry at all online.

I would like to read the rest of the books in the series. I would also like a spin-off series, featuring Woola.

This book is probably best read by flipping around, and also checking online for what pages to go to to read certain important/great passages.

I read Mort's last book, Factory of Tears, and it is hard to pick which book I like better–I think there are better individual poems in this collection, but there are some prose poems in here that I don't like as much. Mort's poem, Jean-Paul Belmondo is one of my very favorite poems in the collection, and in general. It's so much fun.

I don't like the titles, overall–they are usually one word. The line breaks are varied.

My favorites in the book:

Jean-Paul Belmondo There is an audio version on the Poetry Magazine Podcast.

Guess Who

Crossword

Preface

When the book started, with all the slapstick and swearing and sneezing, I thought Griffin was going to be a lovable grump the whole book. I never thought the book would change tone so dramatically.

Fun weird surprising book!

I am reading this for a class. I was very surprised once I saw the book and its illustrations that it was one of the few books I had from the library as a kid. I remember counting all the animals in the illustrations and making sure that they matched the number of animals in the stories.

I thought the reviews would be better for this book. I liked it, and I thought a lot of the questions asked in this book are still relevant.

I want to re-read all the parts of the book that describe the clothes and recreate their wardrobe for myself! All the pockets would be really useful.

This book was so much fun to read! It was full of drama, atmosphere, and horror. I am really glad I had a reason to read this (sci fi/horror class). I loved the tone and the mood set by the novel, where everyone makes a big deal about everything and is constantly noting the color in ladies' cheeks, whether she was looking pale or in good health.

My favorite thing of all is when Van Helsing tried to convince/alert people that vampires exist and kill people, and everyone is so shocked and refuse to believe it at first. It is a hilarious, and melodramatic.

This took awhile to read, but I enjoyed myself the whole time and didn't want to rush.

I liked this book so much I am really happy I have her other book [b:The Girls of Peculiar 13509966 The Girls of Peculiar Catherine Pierce http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1330816020s/13509966.jpg 19063015] to read.I really liked her style, it was straightforward but still interesting and gorgeous. The book was split into sections including love poems written to things like “sinister moments,” America, and longing, poems written in the style of movie types, and poems written to famous last words. I don't think all these styles fit together, but I have no problem at all with a book that is made of pieces. It is nice because it is almost as if I get 3 or 4 little books in this collection.I liked the titles in the book, the sections all had their own naming rules. The book included orderly line and stanza breaks and also a few poems that were disorderly in their breaks.My favorite poems in the book:Love Poem to Sinister MomentsIn Which I Imagine Myself into a Film NoirIn Which I Imagine Myself into a Slasher FlickApostrophe to the First Gray Hair (bottom poem)

I liked this book, and thought it had a lot of useful information. I read a bunch of these books at once, and while it wasn't my favorite, I still think it is really well done.

I am speechless.

I felt like this didn't really get me writing better or more than usual. I think it would be very useful to a lot of people, but I was already doing some of the things that Cameron suggested in the book. I am really glad this book is around, helping people become more creative is a very noble cause. I just don't think the book is that useful for me.

Ai makes me feel like I am losing my mind whenever I read her. Her persona poems are absolutely the best. They are so realistic and varied, it feels like past lives may be a real thing.

I read her other book Cruelty, and I liked it slightly better but everything I've read by her has been fantastic.

Most of the poems take place in the past, and in a lot of different locations. There is a lot of violence in them. The violence is very realistic. I had to put the book down a couple times. These poems are some of the heaviest I've read.

A lot of poems in this collection are sectioned and the titles are usually a time and place, or a type of person or job title, so you know right away what persona is the speaker. The line breaks are in orderly spots, natural breath spots in the poem.

My favorites in the collection:

The Killing Floor

The Mortician's Twelve Year Old Son

The Kid

The Expectant Father (middle of the page in yellow font)

I enjoy reading books like this because I am always trying to find ways of making my brain work better. Because I read so many of these books, I am familiar with parts of the information already. However, every book has something new to offer.

I liked the practical advice put together with scientific theory that Restak included in the book. He is good at explaining complex ideas in a way that non-scientists can understand.

I never read Paul Celan before. He is probably the most surrealist poet that I've read. The poems are fun and I like visualizing the strange images. I was surprised to hear how he committed suicide because these poems seems like they are full of joy. They are delightful.

I would like to read more of his poetry. I know he writes in different languages, so I'd be interested to see if his writing style is different in different languages.

A lot of the poems were prose poems and most of the poems didn't have titles. There were two poems that weren't finished–one was a two line fragment and the other was a prose poem that was missing the last page. With poems that are this surreal, I actually don't think it ruins the poems to have parts missing.

Here is a link to 5 of the Romanian poems translated into English.

I didn't like this book of poems as much as the other Patchen books I've seen so far. I guess our senses of humor aren't exactly linked up. The book seems a bit dated and I don't like when he writes poems using accents.

I did like some of the poems, and I didn't think they were bad, but they just weren't as great when Patchen is being serious.