Monday, April 12, 2010

Reading Log







Apr 08, 2010 04:23PM


Zachary Schomburg's Man Suit is a collection of prose poems but, as with so many of these little small press books, such labels are misleading inasmuch as the pieces here seem to be clear examples of flash fiction. And what hyper-imaginitively surreal and LOL funny work this is! I was completely entertained, frequently amazed even, by Schomburg's off-the-wall and extremely clever whimsical flights of fancy. It's the funnest book I've read in the past year or so and I highly recommend it to everyone.


Apr 08, 2010 04:48PM

Holy Land, a prose poem collection by Rauan Klassnik is filled with disturbing imagery of war and violence juxtaposed with wildly surreal renderings of male/female couplings and the natural world. Unlike some other work labled "prose poetry", these most definitely come across as poems and very good ones indeed. I really liked Klassnik's aggressive, unflinching attitude in bringing together very sharply contrasting elements in very creatively clever ways. Bravo.

April 12, 2010 11:05PM

My first encounter with Sam Pink is his newest book, Frowns Need Friends Too, which turns out to be a poetry collection that is riotously funny and off the charts in the absurdity of its biting and caustic imagination. I was sometimes reminded of the self deprecating comedy of Emo Phillips though with Pink, self flagellation or even annihilation is more like it.

Here is perhaps my favorite line in the book (from the poem Holographic Personality Disgrace):

Some people are such assholes that saying, "Look, again, I'm sorry I cut off my thumb and glued it to your baby's head because I thought you'd like him better as a unicorn" means nothing to them."

4.5/5 stars. And I can't wait to get my back-ordered copy of I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It.

2 comments:

  1. Man Suit keeps coming of people's text mouths. I really need to read that.

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  2. I'm going to posting about his newest book, Scary, No Scary, in the near future after I read it.

    ReplyDelete