“They name a sandwich after you, then a street. Each day, you feel yourself shrinking against the image of your one true act.” – Adrian Sobol, “weiner dog”
This month is full of writers I either got to hang out with or, in the case of this week’s author, a writer I saw read from the work the same week I am writing this blog. Again, how much can you really complain about life, when you’re friends with a lot of writers? On Wednesday, I drove past a skate park under a bridge, borrowed a bathroom from a punk bar, then saw my dear friend read poems from his own book. What’s better than this?
What I’ve Been Reading This Week: a book I’ve been pretty stoked about for a long time. A book that made me laugh even when I thought to myself “okay try to just read this one don’t laugh okay?” A book that does enjambed poems well, does prose poems well, does sections well—kinda the perfect shape of a collection, the way Zachary Schaumburg or Elizabeth Willis books feel like how a poetry collection should feel. I am talking about a book that has never heard of a sophomore slump, because it drank its way through sophomore year. Oh, and I read another portion of the epic I’ve been reading. I’m talking, of course, about HAIR SHIRT by Adrian Sobol and The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, pages 202-301, lines 8041-12040.
HAIR SHIRT by Adrian Sobol: okay right away bonus epigraph because what I wanted wouldn’t fit: “The local children laugh. They tease you. They begin to call you Doughboy Dan in their little playground songs, even though your Christian name, the one your father died giving you, is Hot Dog Hank” – Adrian Sobol, “high impact donkey”
Adrian’s second collection firmly puts him in the James Tate-Zach Schomburg-Mathias Svalina-Heather Christle lineage, which is praise I always feel I have to qualify. It is easy to write bad imitations of those poets. Adrian has an innate understanding of how that kind of surrealism works, and deploys it to good use. There’s also a great deal more creepy and weird here (complimentary). The real key to reading this collection, though, is to remember that Adrian thinks of poems as cousins of jokes, with setup/worldbuilding/climax/punchline being things he thinks about. There is metaphor here, there is meaning to be extracted, but I think Adrian’s first principles are to surprise, to play with language, to make you laugh, to maybe gross you out, but primarily to make a good poem. These are honest in their strangeness and in on their own jokes. To read this book is to have its images and twists on idioms rolling around in your head for a few days after, but then again, these are not the poems, this is Ohio.
The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You pages 202-301, lines 8041-12040: if you can’t tell, I’m never quite confident in what I’m writing about this book. The lines, they just keep coming. But I know from C.D. Wright’s intro that the speaker of the poem, francis,1 10 fancies himself a hero, constantly invoking Beowulf and the Knights of the Round Table and other literary archetypal heroes, 2) kinda thinks heroism is bogus, because every time he brings it up the conversation usually shifts to bodily fluids and functions and curse words, 3) believes the racist and heavily segregated society he lives in, with its handshake caste system, is wrong, and 4) is willing to go to battle for his friends. This part of the poem sees francis and his other white friend and his two Black friends turned away from a drive-in movie theater because of their skin color. Since it’s the day before Easter, you see, and Preacher’s gonna be here to do a sunrise service, and it just wouldn’t be right for Black people to watch a movie from their car? Racists are stupid. The boys (some of whom are old men, but they’re all boys) raise hell about it, and holler at the phoniness of Jim Crow. A bunch of other stuff happens, but I’m sort of honing in on this as the BATTLEFIELD part. The United States, from 1619, has been a battlefield. Francis, the son of a levee engineer and the first woman manger of Firestone, Francis who fancies himself a poet, Francis who tries to redneckedly model himself after a literary heroes, can’t square what he thinks heroism is with what USian systems make people do.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong. Huffed up on 2025 politics. It’s really hard to read this book. May I recommend doing so with a small group and some sort of guide, like a Poetic Dungeon Master.
BONUS FRANK EPIGRAPH
graveyard grass I told them how sensitive I was how the stars gave me
tattoos I get tan in my sleep I played dominoes with both eyes shut
felt the foxholes in the bones who are you one girl cried I am a seafarer
without a sea I said I am a wanderer with a place I want to abide in
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? How about this reading Bob and I wanted to go to in Los Angeles, but was slightly too far away? You know, when you’re listening to podcasts with a bunch of LA-based people, you don’t realize that places like “NoHo” and “Koreatown” are super far away from each other. I suppose it’s like me being in West Ridge and talking about visiting friends in McKinley Park or going to readings in Logan Square. City geography and neighborhoods with character—we love it! Anyway, here’s full video of Neon Mic Night, a reading put on by the Chicagoan and homie Ben Niespodziany, in North Hollywood:
We have to begin with a heartbreaker. It’s a reminder that all police are liars and can never be trusted. It’s a reminder to not call the police, especially when someone is having a mental health episode, because calling the police is frequently a death sentence. Sheila Albers in Chicago Reader tells the story of how her son, John, was shot to death by police for the crime of pulling a minivan out of his garage. The cops had been called because John was posted suicidal thoughts on social media. What’s worse, and the reason for the article, is how police conspired to cover up what really happened in an effort to avoid culpability. I haven’t forgotten 2020, hell, I haven’t forgotten 2015. Police need to be defunded.
“Climate Change Is A Poem” by Holly Lyn Walrath in Reckoning
“Three Poems and Three Digital Art Works” by upfromsumdirt in Ice Floe (old publication, yes, but sometimes you make Internet Friends with somebody and realize you need to go read their work)
“A poem for my friends” by Catherine Rockwood in Psaltery & Lyre
Let’s end on some good news. Devyn Marshall-Brown with a labor roundup in Chicago Reader informs us that Dispensary 33, aka Where Yr Man Shipwrecked Sailor Gets His Weed, is now completely worked-owned. We love to see it, folks, cheers a celebratory THC syrup-laden sparkling water to that.
What’re you still doing here? Don’t you know that Micah and Brendan have a show?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Do you remember your eyes under your eyemask are open, the dark is real and velvet? Will they mail you out in installments? Have you purchased your high-impact donkey, and more importantly, do you remember where you parked it, or is this Ohio?
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
of course Jimmy and Baby Gauge and Tang and others also speak, and the poem has no quotation marks