notes on 'cognitive-behavioral therapy' by tao lin

‘my heart feels like a medium-erect penis wrapped in saran wrap’

most reviews of tao lin’s books discuss many of the non-book things tao lin has done, but i am going to write about the book

subjects approached in this book are ethical reasoning, hamsters, classical conditioning, getting poetry solicited by other people, evander holyfield, depression, and relationships

the poems comment on themselves and each other a lot, saying things like ‘another poem in this book is eleven pages / so this one should be much longer.’ also the speaker says things like ‘i’ll be right back’

i enjoy a quiet night masturbating in front of the computer
with or without high speed internet
i’ll be right back

and

i want to remember you as a river
with a flower on it

i’ll be right back

this reminded me of the dada manifestoes by tristan tzara where he says various things and then says he considers himself very likeable

there are a lot of poems that describe things that probably actually happened to tao lin, but the poem describes them happening to a hamster

the hamster was caught stealing and banned for life from Whole Foods. The hamster stole only from publicly-traded companies.

there are two poems where the speaker is an ugly fish

and i have swum fast; any speed that exists i have swum at that speed

the book had a lot of unexplained statements and abrupt transitions. the following lines are at the end of a section of the ‘giant poem,’ and they don’t seem to connect to anything else around them

early in the morning
in february
it was very cold
i walked downstairs

the tone suggests, to me, a frame of mind that is calm because it doesn’t feel it needs to explain itself

the book also has lines that give advice more directly

react to disappointment by being quiet and nice
and alone, not by being confrontational or frustrated

i liked some of the titles a lot: ‘i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know’ and ‘i know at all times that in four hours i will feel completely different’

the photo on the back has tao lin wearing sunglasses and a dog in the background, and the dog has red eye


this book was out from melville house in 2008; it has 101 pages

here are the first seven pages of the book

here are the ugly fish poems

here is every page of the book edited into haiku

here is a picture of a promotional sticker for the book

here is tao lin’s blog

here is tao lin’s tumblr

here is tao lin’s twitter

here and here are places you can buy the book

notes on 'shake' by joshua beckman

'the smell of sunscreen makes me want to have already fucked this afternoon'

this book has three sections: ‘shake,’ ‘let the people die,’ and ‘new haven.’ my interest in the book came from reading poems in ‘let the people die,’ and that is the section i liked the most


the poems in ‘let the people die’ vaguely resemble sonnets—they have 14 lines and some have rhymes although not a standard rhyme scheme—and they repeat lines

Desperate bastards breaking bottles
over the heads of other desperate bastards

[...]

Bastards beating bastards in the beautiful sunlight.

here is a poem from ‘let people die’

i felt a tone similar to ron silliman’s ‘ketjak’ when reading these because of the repeated lines and the fragments


there was a lot of humor in the book that i liked

This
birthday party is fucked without the karate
chop of love

+

I joined
this club to learn about billiards, and that’s it

the poems in the first and third sections, ‘shake’ and ‘new haven,’ had less/no repetition and usually longer sentences

here is a poem from ‘shake’

i liked a lot of lines in these sections, but the poems were harder for me to take in and intuitively understand as complete units


none of the poems in the book had titles, and because of that, it seemed like more of a whole instead of many separate poems


overall i felt a ‘clean’ tone from the book, which reminded me of t.s. eliot or something. i don’t mean it is very formal, but it doesn’t seem sloppy; it feels precise


this book was out in 2006 from wave books; it has 79 pages


i have written about another joshua beckman book

more on joshua beckman here

buy shake here or here

notes on 'diminished fifth' by jeffrey bean

'I have / a present for my neighbor: / a billion years of evolution'

jeffrey bean was one of my teachers at cmu and an advisor, and this is his first book, 83 pages, published by david robert books in 2009

this book is maybe less ‘avant-garde’ than most books i mention on here, but the forms vary a lot and sometimes, i think, approach ‘experimental’

the content in dimished fifth is rural landscapes, music terminology and songs, relationships, ‘coming of age’ maybe

There! Forty stalks of dead corn

i was trying to get a feel for the tone/worldview being expressed in the poems

the poems feel like there is something very powerful, maybe, to be said, but i’m not sure exactly what. i’m not sure the speaker knows exactly, either

the feeling is maybe created by the juxtaposition of relatable things and using understatement, or something, to just leave the feeling

at its ‘best,’ i really like the feeling. i think it is similar to what i like about robert grenier, although grenier is even more understated


some of bean’s poems online, most of which are in the book:

“major third”
2 poems in poetry midwest (pg. 8 + 34)
5 poems at david robert books
3 poems at realpoetik


more on jeffrey bean and diminished fifth here

notes on 'nice hat. thanks.' by joshua beckman and matthew rohrer

this book was written collaboratively by joshua beckman and matthew rohrer, and from what i can tell, they recorded the poems with a microphone in public parks and other areas

i like the size of this book and the texture of the cover. it is 64 pages, and it was published in 2002

the poems are organized by their length: two lines, three lines, four lines, five lines, long poems, and a note on process

i liked the short poems in this collection. i got a feeling from them that was similar to haiku. they have one or two things, and that’s it

Leaving
Manhattan
tomorrow.

i like this. it is straight up

there were also a lot of lines that were funny to me

Standing and walking
are two of my favorites.

and this

Believe me.
I’m healthy.

i didn’t like the longer poems as much, but i still liked reading them for some of their individual lines


this book is from wave books and can be bought here or here

more on joshua beckman here, more on matthew rohrer here