recent research shows that communication/and thought are related, but in an odd way:

As you can see, I didn’t really like this one. I got it as part of a subscription to Open Letter press, a translation press run out of the University of Rochester that translates relatively little known authors from around the world into English and publishes good, hefty editions of them. It’s a good press and I have enjoyed a handful of the books I got through the subscription and realized after I got my first book that I actually had others from the press in my collection that I hadn’t otherwise noted.

All of this background is to push my word count because I am not so sure I will be able to get myself to 250 words to explain how little I liked this book. The title of the book should be intriguing, and of course, it IS intriguing, but that poem that uses this line is not only overly simplistic and not very good, it’s ultimately quite empty. In fact, here’s the whole thing:

if I were a suicide bomber, by profession,

so to speak, I would choose a deserted

place, climb up on a big boulder, focus

my mind intensely on the world’s most

insane, stupid, malodorous, and in every

respect repulsive ideas, evoke and display

them, scrutinize their features very precisely

before my inner eye and ear, and then,

when all finally was totally clear,

I would activate the detonator in my belt

(goodbye, ideas)

 

And that’s pretty much what they’re all like. Trite, sophomoric, and boring. I don’t know if it’s the poetry, the translation, the language difference or what, but I got nothing from this collection.

(Photo: https://www.openletterbooks.org/products/if-i-were-a-suicide-bomber)