What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week: <\/strong>a book I\u2019ve been pretty stoked about for a long time. A book that made me laugh even when I thought to myself \u201cokay try to just read this one don\u2019t laugh okay?\u201d A book that does enjambed poems well, does prose poems well, does sections well\u2014kinda the perfect shape<\/em> 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\u2019ve been reading. I\u2019m talking, of course, about HAIR SHIRT<\/em> by Adrian Sobol and The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You<\/em>, pages 202-301, lines 8041-12040.<\/p> HAIR SHIRT<\/strong><\/em> by Adrian Sobol: <\/strong>okay right away bonus epigraph because what I wanted wouldn\u2019t fit: \u201cThe 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\u201d – Adrian Sobol, \u201chigh impact donkey\u201d<\/p> Adrian\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. <\/p> The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You<\/strong><\/em> pages 202-301, lines 8041-12040: <\/strong>if you can\u2019t tell, I\u2019m never quite confident in what I\u2019m writing about this book. The lines, they just keep coming. But I know from C.D. Wright\u2019s intro that the speaker of the poem, francis,1<\/a> 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\u2019s the day before Easter, you see, and Preacher\u2019s gonna be here to do a sunrise service, and it just wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019re all boys) raise hell about it, and holler at the phoniness of Jim Crow. A bunch of other stuff happens, but I\u2019m 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\u2019t square what he thinks heroism is with what USian systems make people do. <\/p> Or maybe I\u2019m completely wrong. Huffed up on 2025 politics. It\u2019s 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. <\/p> BONUS FRANK EPIGRAPH<\/p> graveyard grass I told them how sensitive I was how the stars gave me<\/p> tattoos I get tan in my sleep I played dominoes with both eyes shut<\/p> felt the foxholes in the bones who are you one girl cried I am a seafarer<\/p> without a sea I said I am a wanderer with a place I want to abide in<\/p><\/blockquote> LINKS!<\/strong><\/p> 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\u2019re listening to podcasts with a bunch of LA-based people, you don\u2019t realize that places like \u201cNoHo\u201d and \u201cKoreatown\u201d are super far away from each other. I suppose it\u2019s 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\u2014we love it! Anyway, here\u2019s full video of Neon Mic Night, a reading put on by the Chicagoan and homie Ben Niespodziany, in North Hollywood: <\/p>![\"HAIR](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/184abb6c-0689-4e92-bf5f-86021cf59d16_3928x2594.heic\")
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