That said, pretty sick novel coming up next week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, for anyone wondering\u2014there will be<\/em> both a June and July episode of The Line Break<\/em>.<\/a> Bob and I are coordinating with a couple of very cool guests. Don’t worry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What I’ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A book by a friend. A re-read I spent all year waiting for. A re-read, plus a new book by the same author. That’s right, four<\/em> poetry books. It’s hard to do the “a book that does this \/ a book that does that” gimmick for four books, but one of these books does explicitly say that it’s in the tradition of “I do this \/ I do that.” Take that for whatever that’s worth, certainly not a tank of gas. Probably not a hot dog and Big Gulp combo either, or even a single candy bar. But we don’t measure poetry\u2014or our own half-assed Frank O’Hara jokes\u2014in monetary terms. We measure it in time spent breaking lines together. This week, I read the rest is up to you, love<\/em> by Bridget Gordon, The Wine-Dark Sea<\/em> by Mathias Svalina, Rain <\/em>by Jon Woodward, and Want For Nothing<\/em> by Jon Woodward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n the rest is up to you, love<\/em> by Bridget Gordon: <\/strong>not to brag, but Bridget and I are friends. I’ve seen her read a few times, and she was featured at the most recent Lazy & Entitled reading. I bring this up because I think this is the first book I heard<\/em> a significant portion of before reading. Like, I’ve seen\/heard people read, then bought their book. Or bought their new<\/em> book. But there was so much of this book I had heard prior to actually reading the text that seeing it on the page was a real different experience, and a treat. Bridget is a performer, and these poems read as though they are to be performed\u2014if it comes down to voice or concision, voice is winning. Many of the poems are two pages. None of this is a bad thing, but in reading the text, I was struck by how much poetics were happening, you know, metaphor and juxtaposition and surprising imagery. Not that I don’t hear that stuff live, but the most poetic lines are not always<\/em> the biggest laugh\/gasp\/applause\/snap lines. This book would have paired perfectly with H. Melt’s There Are Trans People Here<\/em><\/a>\u2014they do some similar things and some very different things while maintaining that YOU CANNOT ACTUALLY STOP THE EXISTENCE OF TRANS PEOPLE energy. I wish I’d read it last week, but I’m glad I got to it this week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Wine-Dark Sea<\/em> by Mathias Svalina:<\/strong> this is my fourth or fifth time reading this cover-to-cover, and it really does show me something new every time. Some poems I remember, like \u201cTHE WINE-DARK SEA\u201d or \u201cTHE WINE-DARK SEA.\u201d Others feel completely new (\u201cTHE WINE-DARK SEA,\u201d \u201cTHE WINE-DARK SEA\u201d). There\u2019s so much here, so much that refuses to fully reveal itself and so much that is waiting for you to figure it out. I especially picked up on the longing this around, the calling out to friends. Even the weirdest poets have friends, idk if y’all know that or not. I think it’s sometimes easy to think of sadness in surrealist poetry as being at a remove, like all the strange imagery and dream logic means the stakes are somehow lower. Stakes feel high in this book, as they always are on the wine-dark sea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rain <\/em>by Jon Woodward:<\/strong> maybe you’re not wired like me, but the elevator pitch is a formalist one. Each page has three stanzas, five lines per stanza, five words per line. Yet Jon has that New School-esque conversational tone that feels both effortlessly cool and surprising with language. It sorta tells some stories. His friend Patrick comes to town. But there’s just this nighttime rain feeling to the whole thing, like you’re not at all sure what to expect next but you figure you can navigate it. I wish I had smarter things to say about this book, but it’s such a vibe for me. Man, in 2010-2011, this book was practically religion. Glad it holds up now that I quit drinking, ha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Want For Nothing<\/strong><\/em> by Jon Woodward: <\/strong>Ariana Reines’ intro describes these poems as having something to do with the way the internet is changing the way we talk or even approach language. It does, to an extent, but not to the point that you feel like you’re overwhelmed by internet speak (derogatory) or overwhelmed by internet speak the way Paul Cunningham does in SOCIOCIDE AT THE 24\/7<\/em><\/a> (complimentary)1<\/a><\/sup>. I actually met Jon at AWP this year2<\/a><\/sup>and he told me that this book shared some qualities with Rain<\/em>. Sure enough, there are three stanzas per page, five lines per stanza, and six words per line, with a caesura in between each set of three words. You know yr man the shipwrecked sailor loves a caesura<\/a>. The ease-of-reading New School effect is still there, but that little gap in the middle of each line does actually do something rhythmically. The speaker of these poems certainly reads as older than the speaker of Rain<\/em>, but crucially, the speaker is not more jaded. It was interesting reading these two back-to-back, and that’s an experience I want to have again soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? It’s July, my dudes, it is WAVVES TIME.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"the](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_7398-1024x768.jpg\")