Alien vs. predator

Michael Robbins, 1972-

Book - 2012

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Subjects
Published
New York : Penguin Poets 2012.
Language
English
Main Author
Michael Robbins, 1972- (-)
Physical Description
71 p. ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780143120353
  • I. Alien vs. predator
  • Lust for life
  • New bridge strategies
  • Dig dug
  • Welfare mothers
  • Enjoy my symptom
  • My old job
  • Appetite for destruction
  • New developments in Maoism
  • Remain in light
  • Modern love
  • Second helping
  • Plastic robbins band
  • II. My new asshole
  • To Anthony Madrid
  • We have the technology
  • Material girl
  • Use your illusion
  • Pissing in one hand
  • Affect theory
  • The dark clicks on
  • Downward-facing dog
  • Black wings
  • Mission creep
  • Confessional poem
  • The learn'd astronomer
  • Reading late Ashbery
  • Soft pink widows
  • III. Desperado
  • Hold steady
  • Any one I want
  • Shrimp boat to Limp City
  • For Candle
  • From Karpos
  • Secret identities
  • Dream song 1864
  • Ask the lion
  • The smallest accredited zoo in the nation
  • Space mountain
  • IV. Self-titled
  • Suicide is painless
  • Bubbling under
  • Rosary
  • Human wishes
  • Money bin
  • Things I may no longer bring on airplanes
  • Fox in the snow
  • I did this to my vocabulary
  • Slider
  • Our lady of the perfect soundsystem
  • Left behind
  • Sway
  • I hear you have one mouth
  • Outside Hardee's
  • To the break of dawn.
Review by New York Times Review

Robbins is one part Ashbery and two parts Tupac. He celebrates his selves. In "Alien vs. Predator," the "I" has no fixed identity but is constantly making outrageous boasts: "I killed the boar / 'cause boar's the game I came here for. / I clear the jungle with the edge of my hand. / I make love to an ATM. I enrich uranium. / Dude, this aggression will not stand." Robbins is also, obviously, part Jimi Hendrix and part Jeff Bridges, with a thousand other voices vying to be the one inside his head, from Theodore Roethke to Method Man. There's no shortage of contemporary poetry that samples from this popand subcultural cacophony, but it's rare outside of hip-hop to see the references spread so thick: "Black people can't swim. Yes we can. / The giant Kool-Aid pitcher doesn't love / a wall. I replace the mirrors with Rorschach blots. / Think some Arnold Horshack thoughts." It's in his rhymes - polysyllabic, serial, audacious - that Robbins most resembles an M.C., and most distinguishes himself from other poets. He seems at least as interested in arranging sequences of identical vowel sounds as he is in getting consonants to agree. When he pairs "Beckett" with "cricket," he sounds like Paul Muldoon, but when he rhymes "Parkinson's," "Arkansas" and "dark clicks on," he's channeling Jay-Z. Like a lot of rappers, Robbins doesn't vary his volume or rate of delivery much. This is a pretty relentless debut, but there are worse things to be than relentlessly funny: "I got a tattoo of God. You can't see it / but it's everywhere." Eric McHenry is the author of two books of poetry. He teaches at Washburn University.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 27, 2013]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The poems in this debut are formally exact: etched into scrupulous quatrains and quintets, prosodically meticulous, exasperatingly well-rhymed ("Rorschach blots," for example, is coupled with "Arnold Horshack thoughts"). Yet what makes this collection distinct is a convulsive, almost frenzied use of cultural reference, with vamps on Adorno, Rilke, Berryman, and Wittgenstein, among others. More often, the poems cite pop songs, film dialogue ("Dude, this aggression will not stand" from The Big Lebowski), and American folk culture ("My name is Michael, I'm an alcoholic./Hi, Michael. Row your boat ashore"). Yet this is more than simple allusion. Robbins's ear is tuned to the caffeinated jabber of digital culture, with its endlessly clickable, synaptic links; the flotsam of poems, megastore names, and childhood rhymes get battered about, and the original language re-emerges transformed. Santa urging his reindeer becomes a call to heavy metal bands: "On Sabbath, on Slayer, on Maiden and Venom!" Robert Frost is unceremoniously pantsed: "I give my skinny prick / a shake, to ask if there is some mistake." In a clever moment perhaps serving as Robbins's ars poetica, Auden gets inverted: "Nothing makes poetry happen." (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

The willfully defiant Robbins ("I killed the boar/ 'cause boar's the game I came here for") will appeal to those who like their poetry darkly funny and stirred up. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.