99 Poems to Cure Whatever's Wrong with You or Create The Problems You Need

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
A slightly expanded version of this originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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A little housekeeping to start: That title is just too long to keep using, you know? I thought about using 99PtCWWwYoCTPYN, but that's almost as bad—actually, it's probably worse aesthetically speaking. So, I'm going to go with 99 Poems.

WHY DID I WANT TO READ 99 POEMS...?
I've mentioned around here before that I'm not much of a poetry reader. In fact, I think I've only posted about one other poetry collection. I think this the fourth poetry collection I've read since I graduated from college in the mid-90s.

So what possessed me to pick this up? Well, despite what it may look like around here (and certainly how it feels sometimes), I do want to keep trying new/less familiar things. What got this to my attention was that someone on my Twitter feed posted a picture of one of the poems from this book a couple of months ago—I believe it was “The Woodchuck”—it made me smile, and it seemed like a good idea to try some more.

Which is how I got here. Trying to figure out how to talk about poems.

COMIC POEMS
Like the poem that got my attention, many of these poems fall under the heading of “comic.” They all won't make you laugh—but you'll probably grin a bit. The construction is similar to a joke, but I think it's a disservice, even for the comic poems to treat them as simply that.

THE NON-COMIC POEMS
Then there are the poems on the other end of the spectrum, moving, poignant—even uplifting.

I think most readers will find themselves in some/many of these. Which is both comforting and unnerving.

APPROACHABLE
None of these are difficult to read (some may be challenging to chew on)—a few are two or three lines, a few are about 2 pages long. Most are 6-ish lines long.

Really, I've read tweets that contain as many characters as some of these poems. I guess I'm saying, there's no reason for non-poetry readers like me to feel intimidated by these.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT 99 POEMS...?
How do you not like something with that title? That's practically an instant 3-Stars right there.

But more than that, I liked this collection. Reading a couple of these is a good break from everything else going on in the world around you. A simple way to look at things in a different way. I'm likely to keep an eye out for more by Pink, and I think you should, too.