Review by New York Times Review
INTERROGATION ROOM By Jennifer Kwon Dobbs. (White Pine, paper, $16.) Korean reunification is the dominant metaphor in Dobbs's timely collection, which combines poetry and prose, photos and handwritten documents, English and Korean calligraphy to turn repeatedly to the author's search for her birth mother and lost past, kindest regards By Ted Kooser. (Copper Canyon, $30.) Kooser's greatest assets have long been his generous eye and his way with understatement, two qualities abundantly present in this book of new and selected poems, junk By Tommy Pico (Tin House, paper, $15.95.) Part breakup song, part defiant anthem of belonging, the long poem that makes up Pico's third book is divided into sassy but vulnerable couplets. "I can't even hear the cicadas over the sound of yr / judgment," he writes. There's also a lot about Janet Jackson. 4:?? movie By Donna Masini. (Norton, $25.95.) As the title suggests, Masini's new collection often engages with movies as a theme - "this burden of being watcher and screen" - but its darker, more intimate poems involve a sick sister, radical love Translated and edited by Omid Safi. (Yale University, $25.) Teachings from the Islamic mystical tradition celebrate God, community, romantic love and more, in verse. "I often toggle between two books. The new piece of nonfiction I'm reading is Alexis Clark's enemies in love, which centers on an African-American nurse during World War II who falls in love with a German soldier interned at the prisoner of war camp where she works. It's wild stuff. The book I just finished is Anthony Trollope's 1875 novel the way we live now, which is a grand satire about London society. The main character is a conniving financial type named Augustus Melmotte, who rises to power despite nagging questions about a criminal past, uncertainty over whether he was ever really 'a rich man' and a tendency for lying so extreme, Trollope writes, that 'not a word that he said was worth anything.' After Melmotte wins a position in Parliament, by making 'clamorous assertions of his unprecedented commercial greatness' and threatening his antagonists in the press with lawsuits, he continues to behave with a 'special impudence.' He belittles his wife and uses his daughter as 'chattel for his own advantage.' A shady real estate transaction returns to haunt him. As it comes time for Melmotte to face the music, he makes a grand display of himself before members of Parliament, smoking a cigar as if nothing is wrong. The size of Melmotte's prop is described by Trollope as being 'about eight inches long.' Doesn't it all sound familiar?" - JACOB BERNSTEIN, FEATURES WRITER, STYLES, ON WHAT HE'S READING.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 29, 2018]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pico (Nature Poem) concludes his stellar "Teebs" trilogy in this frenetic book-length poem, a visceral exorcism of personal and collective demons. He draws formal inspiration from A.R. Ammons's Garbage, but "Junk isn't/ garbage It's not outlived its purpose." Pico litters his text with physical, emotional, and psychological detritus: "A collision of corn dog bites and/ chunky salsa to achieve a spiritual escape velocity," thrift store miscellanea, and the baggage of lost loves. The poem is also driven by pop culture references (Janet Jackson is the work's patron saint); commentary on gay hookup culture; and allusions to such world events as the Syrian refugee crisis, the 2016 shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub, and the water protectors' uprising at Standing Rock. These references build into an apocalyptic crescendo via Pico's propulsive fervor, junk piling on junk. Junk also doubles as metaphor for the psychic state of terror one experiences as a target of persecution, in Pico's case, as a gay "NDN." "I'm from a place where ppl became/ garbage," he writes. "Poverty is like this:/ you keep everything until the wheels fall off and then you eat// the wheels." The poem is a therapeutic process for poet and reader alike; Pico demonstrates that a person's many selves, traumas, anxieties, hookups, and breakups can become a marker of courage and survival. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Replete with street talk, this third book in a trilogy (following Nature Poem and IRL) is a stream-of-consciousness riff on junk and all its meanings, continuing to explore Pico's character Teebs in what could be a love poem or a break-up poem or both. It's written in couplets as one long poem, racing forward because Pico uses little punctuation, which gives readers little chance to rest. Whether the result is a meditation for the modern gay man or a manifesto on the treatment of Native Americans and the disenfranchised, junk becomes a character, along with Janet Jackson, Shonda Rhimes and Cindy Crawford. Junk could be detritus or something worthless or male genitalia. Or is "Junk: a relief map of yr traumas"? Maybe it's "the space between utility." Or "to remove Junk is an upgrade Poverty is like this:/ you keep everything until the wheels fall off and then you eat/ the wheels." In the end, Pico says, "Junk is letting go.Junk finds a new boo.We lie quiet in the buff, not touchin." VERDICT An ambitious and impressive work, using visceral language, that will appeal to a wide range of readers.-Karla Huston, Appleton, WI © Copyright 2018. 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.
