Book reviews
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On reading poems from Donika Kelly’s ‘Bestiary’ in jail.
Will poems about lovelorn bowerbirds help men in jail for domestic violence? At least the words are beautiful.
abuse, abusive relationships, affirmative consent, AI, art, assault, Bestiary, Bower, bowerbird, Bruce Weigl, child abuse, Child Beater, consent, CPS, creation, DCS, desire, domestic, domestic violence, Donika Kelly, drinking, Heartbreak, incarceration, jail poetry, Kavanaugh, kindness, love, love poems, mass incarceration, mouse, objectification, poems, poetry, pornography, pre-emptive excuses, relationships, respect, romance, sex education, sexual assault, sexuality, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, That Cat, The Impossible, trauma, violence, What Gay Porn Has Done for Me, writing, writing poetry
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On Vaughan & Staples’s ‘Saga’ and parenting metaphors.
‘Saga’ beautifully depicts the trials of parenting … like the risk of plunging into a black hole and never seeing your friends again.
A. Zee, astronomy, astrophysics, babies, big stuff, black hole, blame, Brian Vaughan, child abuse, children, comics, curved space, event horizon, fatherhood, Fiona Staples, graphic novel, gravity, Hawking radiation, interplanetary travel, Interstellar, Lying Cat, math, numeracy, On Gravity, overcoming sexual abuse, overcoming trauma, parenting, physics, PTSD, relativity, saga, shame, space fetus, the universe, time suck, timesuck, trauma
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On asymmetry and ‘The Hatred of Poetry.’
Like you, the people in jail have stories to tell.
45, agitation for change, asymmetry, asymmetry of attention, attention, attention economy, Ben Lerner, By Any Measure, county jail, criminal justice, dipole moment, Donald Trump, grammar, hate crime, Hatred of Poetry, idiosynchratic grammar, imprisonment, In Between Poems, incarceration, Jack Gilbert, jail poetry, Jana Prikryl, lockdown, lyric, lyric poems, lyrical poetry, mass incarceration, MFA, Orlando shooting, Philip Warren Anderson, physics, physics of poetry, physics of symmetry, plea for attention, poet, poetry, prison poetry, reading poetry in jail, rehab, rehabilitation, school to prison pipeline, symmetry, teaching in jail, teaching poetry, terrorism, The After Party, The Hatred of Poetry, the internet, the power of words, Thirty Thousand Islands, waning attention spans, why read poetry, why water flows, why write poetry, writing poetry in jail, [jumpsuits]
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On Tao Lin’s ‘Trip,’ targeted advertising, and finding scraps of life in books.
Psychedelics could help you change your life, but our government insists that they have “no accepted medical use.”
A Really Good Day, abusive relationships, addiction, advertising, Ayelet Waldman, Best of Photojournalism, better living through chemistry, body, book review, business cards, capitalism, corporations, dimethyl tryptamine, ditch your phone, DMT, domestic violence, drug rehab, drug use, drugs, entheogens, finding shit in books, hallucinogens, healing power of nature, healing power of psychedelics, incarceration, inner space, jail, jail poetry, LSD, lysergic acid, lysergic acid diethyl amide, magic mushrooms, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, mind, murder, mushrooms, nature, Pages to Prisoners, Perdue Meats, pharmacology, photography, prison, psilocin, psilocybin, psychedelics, psychonaut, recovery, rehab, rehabilitation, relapse, review, scientific method, self-discovery through drugs, sending books to prisoners, shrooms, slaughterhouse, smartphone addiction, spirit, state-mandated rehab, stuff inside books, Tao Lin, teaching in jail, Terrance McKenna, trip, tripping, tryptamines
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On Tara Westover’s “Educated.”
How can you learn to trust in a world where your beloved family member’s visage might conceal a monster?
alternate histories, alternate history, apocalypse prepping, behavioral change, Charles Reznikoff, cocaine, coke, cultural knowledge, drugs, Educated, eels, endangered eels, etymology, gaslighting, government aid, Hillbilly Elegy, history, Holocaust, Hulk smash, J.D. Vance, jail poetry, Jekyll and Hyde, memory, paranoia, perception, poetry class, poverty, preppers, prison poetry, SNAP, storytelling, Tara Westover, teaching poetry, teaching poetry in jail, The Hulk, the mutability of memory, traumatic brain injury
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On courage, parenting, and Sergio de la Pava’s ‘Lost Empress.’
It takes real courage to do something hard day after day with nobody watching, nobody cheering.
a meaningful life, accounting, brain damage, bravery, concussion, courage, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Dinnerstein, emotional pallet, fatherhood, Fatherhood in Pieces, finite bravery, football, good parenting, heroism, how we act when no one is watching, interminable tasks, Lost Empress, meaning, Michael Chabon, parenting, Pops, raising children, raising kids, Sergio De La Pava, Sisyphus, sports, suicide, The Mermaid and the Minotaur, The Pale King, writing
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On automation, William Gaddis, and addiction.
An inefficient world might be a much better place to live.
Agape Agape, AI, artificial intelligence, automation, Brian Alexander, Capital, capitalism, corporate managers, corporate takeover, death of small towns, delivery drone, drug prices, economics, evolutionary inefficiencies, Glass House, greed, heroin, human evolution, inequality, investors, J R, Jeff Bezos, jobs that robots can do, JR, labor economics, labor vs. capital, machine learning, Mark Binelli, meth, people want jobs, people want to work, piano roll, player piano, robot doctors, robot lawyers, robot writers, robotics, robots, robots designed by robots, The Michigan Experiment, unemployment, wealth, who should the stakeholders of a school be, William Gaddis
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On Matthew Walker’s ‘Why We Sleep.’
We’re asking addicts to learn whole new ways of living … and expect them to do it while utterly sleep deprived in jail.
cocoffala, Communion of the Saints, enhanced interrogation, false confessions, heroin, incarceration, jail, jail poetry, learning, mass incarceration, Matthew Walker, Menachem Begin, methamphetamine, Monster House Press, opiates, Poems from the Jail Dorm, poetry, prison, prison poetry, probation, sleep, sleep deprivation, sleep deprived, sleep spindles, The Story of a Prisoner in Russia, torture, White Nights, why we sleep, William Booker
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On reading Natalie Diaz’s “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs” with a room full of men in jail for drugs.
Natalie Diaz wrings beauty from an impossible situation — how much hurt can you bear, trying to help someone who can’t be saved?
addiction, amphetamines, crystal meth, drugs, heroin, How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs, jail, jail poetry, juvenile detention, meth, methamphetamine, Natalie Diaz, opiate epidemic, overdose, poem, poetry, prison, prison poetry, rehab, relapse, sobriety, street drugs, teaching in jail, War on Drugs, When My Brother Was an Aztec
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On Gabriel Tallent’s “My Absolute Darling.”
Worlds collide in Gabriel Tallent’s beautiful, brutal ‘My Absolute Darling.’
Frank Brown Cloud 