Modern Poetry

Diane Seuss · ★★★★★

This is the first book of poetry I've read by Diane Seuss and I am floored. She is funny, and dirty, and clever, and vulnerable - everything I look for in a friend. I haven't been this enthusiastic about a poet in a long time but I mean just look at this! It's the final stanza from a poem called Penetralium: Be drunk... it's the only way, raved Baudelaire, corkscrewed through and through with syphilis. How artless, this source of art, this shit show where the greenest watercress grows. I could describe all these poems the same way - Seuss mines a shit show where the greenest watercress grows. Me? I hung on every word. From Rhapsody (one of my favorites): The adage is that a cynic is a broken romantic, except for Arthur Rimbaud, who was born and died a misanthropic shrew. I would like to conjecture that a romantic is a cynic who has been infected with resurrection metaphors and believes in the integrity of a good line break. I know someone who saw a famous lounge singer carried out of a Vegas hotel on a stretcher with a broken light bulb in his ass. Be that guy. Don't be Jesus, be the Shroud. Don't be the savior, be the stain. Funny and playful, of course, but behind the clever turns of phrase and evocative images there is an undercurrent of profound implication. Seuss may be the class clown but she's only making everyone laugh because the thing she really wants to say is uncomfortable. I love this book. I'll be reading it again, for sure, and I highly recommend it to any reader, even dabblers, or the innocent, who don't read a lot of poetry.