OF: Entitlement



Since secret video footage was released via the website/magazine Mother Jones--a lot has been said about Mitt Romney's recent comments about the 47% of supposedly non-income-tax-paying Americans who will never be convinced to take care of themselves. If you've been living under a rock: according to Mitt Romney (and by extension, those like him), 47% of Americans "Believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."

I don't pretend to think that I can (or want to) add to the already brilliant, nuanced criticisms of the presidential candidate. But I can't help but feel motivated to say something about this pernicious little word: entitlement. Entitlement. Here's what that word means to me.

Entitlement means that you believe you are qualified to run the United States of America because you successfully managed to pad your off-shore account by legally circumventing IRS tax code.

Entitlement means that you believe it's completely okay--not only okay, but a point of pride--that you only paid 14.1% in taxes on dividends earnings in 2011 as a multi-millionnaire, when the average American household (earning roughly $50,000-75,000) paid an effective income tax rate of 12.8%. Yes, I understand that the latter rate is lower. But I also understand how it is overall a much HIGHER cost when one considers the proportion of income swallowed by this sort of tax system. What did Clinton say at the DNC? Oh yes: arithmetic.

Entitlement is running one's campaign on a Christian platform and hating the poor.

Entitlement is being a Christian politician who conveniently forgets Matthew 19:21: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me."

OR

Matthew 19:24: "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

OR

Matthew 25:35-40: "For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me."

That Jesus guy sure does sound like a socialist. An entitlement socialist, no?

Entitlement means telling 47% of America--nearly half of the population--that it's "not [your] responsibility to worry about them" while concurrently asking for their votes, to be their ruler, to be given the highest privilege and responsibility in the nation as President.

It doesn't just stop at politics, kids. There's a lot that's upsetting me.

If I haven't pissed you off/alienated you already, I may do so now. I apologize in advance.

I have a friend who told me once that I sounded ridiculous when I went off on tangents about race/the effects of race/class/what-have-you. He told me that I was like his short-sighted relatives in thinking there were certain things that "only brown people are allowed to talk about." For the record, I don't feel that way--but I do get a bit sick of people (particularly writers, particularly liberal, college-educated writers) thinking they have somehow been liberated from the yolk of any underlying prejudice simply because they grew up in a post-Civil Rights America, in an integrated society. Simply because they have perhaps dated outside of their race or have a black friend or because they like Bob Marley or because they are well-versed in and sympathetic to diasporas of all sorts.

Entitlement is thinking it's totally okay that women, and particularly women writers of color, are drastically underrepresented in publishing today. As though it were just a matter of unfortunate happenstance, and not institutional gatekeeping. As a woman writer of color, as a female Hawaiian poet (which represents less than 1% of published writers in America) I am disheartened by the blase attitude of some of my peers in publishing about this issue. It's largely shrugged off as unimportant, or glazed over with some sort of meaningless platitude. It is the literary version of a Romney-ism.

I am no victim. I am not entitled because I desire a fair opportunity in life or in art. Any path I carve out, I carve of and from myself. That applies to politics and poetry. Frankly, they have more in common than you'd imagine. Nearly every day, in working; in paying my fair of taxes; in going about my small life, the life of a unnamed Hawaiian woman cranking out a modest existence in the American South; in sitting on the bus in between jobs; in reading this or that; in waking at dawn to write a poem, I think of the Lucille Clifton poem, "won't you celebrate with me?"

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did I see except to be myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge

between starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that every day

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

Oh Hello There, Internet

Forgive me friends if I've neglected you these last months.

It’s been so long since I posted anything online that I admittedly feel a bit timid. Every time I've thought about writing anything here, I've suddenly stopped--as though the blog police will inform me that I'm violating unspoken decorum in polluting airspace in writing about my-little-ol-insignificant-self instead of something or someone which warrants actual attention and examination. 

Life right now is anxious and urgent, but perhaps it always is? Perhaps we are only cognizent of the urgency of living when things are painful or new, or when we are truly free and have reconciled our actions with the conviction that we will die sooner than we think?

Life right now is the fullness of Atlanta heat and sweaty, pregnant clouds collapsing into violent rainstorms. Life right now is discovering Philip Larkin for the first time and quietly weeping into glasses of very, very cheap red wine over gorgeous lines like, "Man hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf."

Life right now is two jobs to equal one full(ish) income.

Life right now is coming home at night to a child who is already sweetly sleeping in her bed, and feeling strong and concurrently helpless when I drop that same child off at preschool the next morning while she whimpers and clings to my leg and begs me to stay with her instead of going back to work. Life right now is modeling the value of hardwork and sacrifice. I can only hope that one day she will forgive me, and understand why I must be apart from her so much right now. 

Life right now is fighting for life right now.

Life right now is listening to my inner-most self.

Life right now is politely (temporarily) removing myself from the poetry scene, and that feels very good and necessary. My brain and heart have appreciated the break from the preening and useless circle-jerking that seems to abound in this little tribe.

Life right now is gobbling up a lot of non-fiction, YA novels, and personal finance manuals lately and somehow that feels more nutritive and empowering than my constant poetry consumption in the last 2 years which has left me (lately, anyway) feeling disgusted or rejected or full of exquisite jealousy. I leave poetry with the hope of rediscovering the joy of it.

Life right now is quiet and solitary and uncertain, but for the first time it is taking a shape that I give it.

Surely that is worth saying something about.

OF: Quiet Space

Photo by Big Richard C, CC (c) 2006

As someone currently living in a house with six other people, I've been thinking a lot about silence lately. Namely, what it means to have quiet space--literally, and mentally--and what it means to be bombarded with so many "life-improving" technologies or human interactions on any given day that it all becomes neither life-improving nor human. 

I've been thinking about the role of library as a sort of sanctuary of the mind and whether that concept is valid any more. 

I've been thinking about throwing my beloved iPhone into a dumpster and cutting my blossoming Internet addiction off at the root. 

I've been thinking about the extent to which all of this false connection actually makes me feel more alone, more antsy, and less capable of focusing on books, art, conversation, people. 

I've been thinking about what constitutes true quiet space--the cessation of external noise, internal noise, or both? What is the value of silence in our culture? In the age of narcissism, of the tweet, do we even honor silence as a necessary thing for the mind? As a necessary aperture by which regeneration and learning enter us? Creativity and peace?

Which brings me to the story of the "Crazy Asian Chick Who Goes Mad Over Breathing @ CSUN." A few weeks ago The Huffington Post did a brief story on a YouTube video that'd gone viral of an Asian student at CSUN who went "ballistic" in the library during finals week because other students were talking on their cell phones, etc, while she was trying to study. Naturally this caused a flurry of response because the girls who filmed their fellow student's rant called attention to her race, etc...

I felt incredibly sad for the girl when I first saw the video; namely because people thought it was okay to post critiques of her actions based on stereotypes and hatred toward Asians, and also because no one invested in the conversation centered on race spoke to the burden of the pressures to succeed as felt by minority students in particular. Very few stopped to consider what it meant to succumb to rage in a moment of intense academic stress and then suffer subsequent humiliation via the worldwide web.

And watching this video again, I'm still sad. And even now I'm not sure that I shouldn't be accusing myself of exploiting this student by re-posting the video and therefore sort of victimizing her again? And isn't that the nature of news? Of the Internet? Of talking about miserable and hurtful things which become viral on a platform wholly unconcerned with the lives--let alone feelings--of those who become immortalized with these sort of cruel snapshots? A moment of irrational anger. Of lust. A tweet. A picture. Forever and ever as the metadata lives and the URL persists.

What is anyone entitled to anymore  in terms of privacy or silence or dignity when it's so simple for anyone within earshot to record via smartphone and broadcast/share/digg/tweet/stumbleupon? Where was the librarian when this whole debacle was going down during finals week at CSUN? What obligation does a library/librarian have (if any) to provide and reinforce a place of sanctuary, of silence?

I don't really have any immediate answers to these questions other than to think of the myriad ways that I need silence as a human being. As a poet. As a woman attempting to reconnect herself to herself, to her mind, on a continual basis. It's not that I think Internet or the technology is inherently evil, or damaging, I just think it perhaps demands too much oxygen, too much attention in the menagerie. 

OF: Ridiculous, Mildly Offensive, & Politically Incorrect Ads Found in Travel Magazines

Since I'm broke and can't afford to travel right now, I decided to cozy up with the world via Conde Nast Traveler. And in the process of traversing the globe in 148 glossy pages I learned a few things about luxury, and culture, and globalism, and that advertisements really CAN offer us products and services that enrich our lives. They can also teach us valuable things about wealth and being an international citizen in the 21st century.


I mean, just take a look at some of these beauties...

1) LUXURY TRAVEL MAKES YOU SEXY. YOU GLOBE-TROTTING-SEX-KITTEN, YOU!

Also, staying at this hotel will totally make it okay to ride a Vespa while wearing peep-toe pumps and a cocktail dress. Bonus points for the vintage helmet and riding glasses. Look at all the men in the lobby grooving on my traveling-single-white-girl-rides-a-motocicleta vibe!

2) TEXAN MEN ARE THE NATURAL CHOICE FOR BEEFING-UP ITALIAN COLOGNE ADS

Real men wear DOLCE & GABBANA. They also lounge about with unbuttoned shirts & perfectly man-scaped chests. Mmm. Must buy. Mmm Matthew McConaughey, y'all.

3) SPA RESORTS ARE WARM, WELCOMING PLACES...LIKE VAGINAS

Cause what's sexier than overtly suggesting that your luxury hotel and spa is like a vagina? Also, spa vacations get you laid.

...and speaking of spas...

4) ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS ARE THE BEST PLACES FOR SEAWEED WRAPS!

You know, like, um Egypt--where they're totally having a revolution?

5) HAVING MONEY MEANS YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR OWN REALITY 

I choose the India without the pesky poverty, please-and-thank-you! SUCH a bummer.

6) REAL RELAXATION HAPPENS IN A PASTRY-SHAPED CABANA

Celebrity Cruises: Relax inside of a cupcake. I hear Beyonce is doing it.

7) TRAVELING TO CANADA MAY CAUSE FIERCE FLATULENCE

Toronto: the break-windy city. Blame it on the duck fat.

8) IT'S TOTALLY SAFE TO SNAP PICS OF CHEETAHS FROM AN EXPOSED VEHICLE

 maul.

You too can lay on top of one of God's slain creatures. Cox & King's African Safaris, since 1940. 

9) FOR A PRICE YOU CAN RELIVE YOUR DAYS AS A ZYGOTE

 Return to the womb for five days and four nights. Oh, and enjoy Mexico.

10) HAVING MONEY MEANS YOU DON'T NEED REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS 

This would be funny if the tag line wasn't at least partially serious: clairvoyance is a job requirement. I mean, at least they're honest right? I can think of several jobs over the course of my adult life that should've had this in the job ad somewhere above or below "proficient in Microsoft Office."

11) IF YOUR LIFE IS MISERABLE, ALCOHOL IS THE ANSWER.

If all of this bread-winning-luxury doesn't fill you up or support real human intimacy, you can always drink  yourself into a stupor.

OF: Black Friday

Alas, Thanksgiving has arrived. Which means that in approximately 24 hours America will be donning her fat pants and cuddling up to a hot plate of turkey lovin'.

Don't get me wrong: I love the turkey lovin'. I don't take offense to someone pile-driving through an entire plate or two of green bean casserole. ASIDE: am I the only one who actually likes green bean casserole? We could get into a whole discussion about moderation and gluttonous behavior and all that, but really, Thanksgiving alone isn't enough to qualify you as obscene if you "go ham" on turkey...or something.


But you know what I don't love? You know what IS obscene? This...

AND THIS:

Every year after November 25th we hear the perennial horror stories of Americans fighting and getting trampled in the name of crock-pots, DVD players, and flat screen televisions--and all of this after willingly enduring several hours in the cold, herded like cattle. Every year the sales begin earlier and become more enticing. Every year corporations spend millions of dollars trying to figure out how to part the consumer from his. Why even wait in the cold when you can wait inside a Walmart store which is open all night? Why even fight the crowd at all when you can shop in your underwear on Cyber Monday or from your Ebay app for iPhone?

Ladies and gents, it's a brave new world when we can buy cheap Chinese products while sitting on the crapper. I'm sure that's a metaphor for how our country is going, but I'm not caffeinated enough to figure that one out just yet.

To be fair, I've taken part in the Black Friday madness--once--and I waited in line for 2.5 hours in a Kmart in Yonkers for an awful polyester (i.e. scratchy and uber-flammable) blanket, a T.V. stand, and some kitchen items that I was otherwise too poor to afford at the regular price as a malnourished undergrad living in New York City. And you know, I sort of get it: 


Oh the comradery of capitalism! 
Oh the build up until the doors swing open!   
Oh the neatly-stacked towers of microwave boxes! 
Oh the fuzzy Spongebob slippers! 

Oh the discount laptops that seem to promise that *this* year little Billy will love me, and besides it's for school, and he will make the most of it by not wasting endless hours playing Skyrim or watching cats doing ridiculous things on YouTube!


Call me old-fashioned, a whiny-pants Liberal, a Debbie downer, but--I'm not participating in Black Friday. Further I encourage my friends and family not to, and here's a few reasons why:

1) This may sound simple, but Black Friday means = employees will need to cut their holiday/family time short to serve you. Major corporations like Target, Macy's, Walmart, and BestBuy are now opening on Thanksgiving to allow shoppers to spend, spend, spend. Yeah, so what, you ask? This move is particularly offensive to me--and it should be to you too--because it is yet another example of the American labor force being undermined and undervalued for profit. I will not shop at any store that is open on Thanksgiving.

2) You may be getting a fabulous discount on your tchotchkes, but at what overall cost? The things we are buying ultimately support multi-national corporations who are increasingly exporting jobs, lowering wages and benefits, and ditching their relationship with the American people faster than Kim Kardashian ditched Kris Humphries. Unconvinced? While you're recovering from your tryptophan coma tomorrow, take a gander at Walmart: the High Price of Low Cost or Capitalism: a Love Story. Unmitigated consumerism does not benefit the economy, it places us in debt.

3) While we're discussing unmitigated consumerism, let's talk about the effects of raising generations of people who have become programmed to believe that their love of others/self-worth/parenting/sense of personal satisfaction/celebration of the birth of Christ is determined by the gusto of their gift-giving. Hence why we must buy more, and earlier, and cheaper. Hence why we must buy anything at all. This disturbs me more than anything. It can't be blamed entirely on Black Friday, but it is certainly aided and abetted by that phenomenon.

As a parent I am constantly worried about the ramifications of various things in my child's life. Responsible consumption ranks as highly for me as proper nutrition. I often think about purchases as ethical or moral choices, and how I can communicate that sense of urgency to my daughter. I think of my own poverty as a child and how I longed for meaningless junk to make me feel adequate, worthy, anesthetized to my environment. I think about the extreme poverty of children making trinkets in other countries; children who are working harder than I have ever worked in my life, and for far less.

I want a child who has been instilled with the confidence to know she is loved, precious, and blessed without copious things as evidence. It's not that I'm opposed to gift-giving--quite to the contrary, actually. I am, however, opposed to traditions that ask that one sector of the population to sacrifice rest and family time so that a slightly more advantaged sector of the population can act like buffoons while handing over their increasingly small incomes over to the most privileged sector of the population.

Stay tuned for a forthcoming post, "OF: Homemade & Economical Gifts." But in the meantime: gobble, gobble kids.

OF Occupy Wall Street & Those "Lazy, Misinformed" Protestors

Like everybody not concerned with Kim Kardashian's 72-day marriage, I've been thinking a lot about Occupy Wall Street lately, and the state of our union. And I don't have as many answers as I do questions:

• What's up with these people who keep insisting that the Occupy movement is about demanding a handout?

• What's up with politicians claiming to represent Christian values, but showing through their actions/legislation/rhetoric that they hate people?

• What's up with with the idol worship of capitalism and the fairy tale that is the "free market" system?

• What's up with all the anti-immigrant and anti-poor people vitriol?

• What's up with all the anti-intellectualism?

• What's up with America? 

 ...and most importantly...What's up with Michele Bachmann's crazy eyes?

That first question in particular really persists for me. The irksome idea that the people occupying Zucotti Park, or closing the Port of Oakland are really just doing all this unnecessary rabble-rousing because they are whiners who can find nothing better to fill their time--like 1) taking a shower, 2) getting a job, and 3) "sucking it up," as it were, like hard-working adults. 

I don't know what's the most troubling aspect of criticisms like these? Should I be more upset that they are often issuing from the mouths of working-class people who are, themselves, marginalized by the systems and status quo they so fetishize? Or should I be more disturbed by the fact that criticisms like these actually belie a deeper, more pernicious societal distrust of democratic processes like the right of the people to assemble peacefully and demand change? Whereby we see protest and picketing and occupying as something only 60's-nostalgic hippies and nit-wit college kids do? Whereby we say, hold on America: you are not allowed to speak or organize until you've provided the inherently-biased-corporately-owned media with a bulleted, and footnoted list of grievances and demands?

How dare they open their mouths to speak without a figure-head and a five point plan!

How dare they start a national dialogue on income inequality, staggering personal debt, and corrupt K-street lobbyists stealing the legislative process away from the American people!

How dare they talk about things like corporate corruption and monopolization--because, isn't Walmart splendid? We need our cheap toilet paper, America! We need our Kathy Ireland sweaters knitted by a 10-year-old in India! We need our Comcast customer service delivered to us by a rep in the Philippines!

Corporations are job creators! Corporations are people! Wealth trickles down! But I digress...

Back to my original point here: the OWS movement has virtually nothing to do with a handout, ladies and gentleman.

If I could personally sit across the table from naysayers or Conservatives like those who've come out in support of the mocking, anti-OWS movement called "We are the 53%"--I'd tell them, respectfully, this:

1) The Occupy movement is not about a handout, it is about justice. As someone who supports OWS, I feel like our government and economic systems should support people who, like you, have: worked 3 jobs, paid for your own schooling, and did not ask for any help along the way. More power to you! I think you should be rewarded and be able to keep what you worked so hard to earn. But the truth is, our current systems don't reward that at all. In fact, our current economic model is increasingly against you--the dude in the middle. Look at the statistics on income tax for individuals versus tax for corporations. And this is just one aspect of the overall way the middle-class is being sucked dry, eradicated to a mere footnote of post-WWII America. The fact that the 53%-ers are telling themselves (and others) to stop whining and "suck it up" tells me that they've decided--ignorantly, or stubbornly, like good little worker bees--to lay prostrate, willingly, before the altar of a disinterested idol at their own expense and peril. If you think American big business is here to benefit the community and treat its workers with dignity, you are sadly mistaken.

2) To believe that the protesters are there because they are not professional people, or are lazy and don't want/need jobs is astoundingly untrue. Of course there are always going to be those people present at protests or demonstrations who are there purely for the drama or fun of it--the unwitting bandwagoners. This is as true for the Occupy movement as it is for the Tea Party supporters who descended on the capitol last year. But I don't think it's fair for the media--both Conservative and Liberal--to paint a portrait of the participants as ignorant, iPhone-bearing, privileged crybabies who want to feel like they're participating in a botched nouveau version of the 1960's.

I am myself representative of many of the people I met at Occupy Atlanta: I am a Master's-level degreed professional, underemployed, facing hefty student loan payments for my education, and discouraged at the lack of prospects for anything beyond working 2+, part-time, service-sector jobs (if I'm very, very lucky).  

Look, I want a job! Let me clarify that, I'd like to be fully employed. I'm one of the fortunate few with the privilege of a part-time job. And further, I don't expect anyone but myself to pay for the student loans I took out with the full understanding that nothing is certain or promised to me except death and taxes. I support OWS not because I want a Wall Street-style bailout for my personal debt, but because I want a future for my daughter that doesn't make it necessary for her to become a indentured-servant-debt-slave to survive or in order to realize her natural right to an education while the privileged of our society reap interest on her hopes and her toil.

I'll work 2 or 3 part-time jobs if I have to, and I will, and I have before. All pride to the wind, folks. But it would be nice if I only had to work one job in order to pay my bills and provide for my daughter. Does that make me an over-privileged, spoiled jerk to hope for a future where my hard work and education results in a 40 hour work week, benefits I can afford, a modest savings, and God-forbid--two weeks of paid vacation? Doesn't look like that kind of pipe dream is going to happen for me, and millions of Americans like me any time soon. Here is the latest employment summary from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and as expected--things are bleak. And that summary doesn't even include the story of the "underemployed" such as myself, which represents an even larger sector of the population. And that summary doesn't even include discouraged workers or those who are ineligible to claim unemployment!

3) The last thing I would tell the mockers of Occupy Wall Street is this: instead of useless cynicism or passive mockery, why don't you try activism? Why don't you embrace optimism? Empowerment? Change? Disagree with my political opinions? That's totally fine. That's democracy. That's America. But do something about it besides posting a snarky comment on Facebook.

Of course there are issues with OWS, it's an imperfect process like anything new and different. But considering History--and yes, by that I mean the fruits of the 60's (which include civil rights, the desegregation of schools, and women's rights--all generally considered positive social changes)--I simply ask you to give it time. Let it figure itself out without your prejudice or the confines of outdated modes of operation. 

The kids are alright.

La Literati Reviews: Six Months, by Josh Olsen

SIX MONTHS, BY JOSH OLSEN
Tainted Coffee Press, 2011, $10.00
http://zygoteinmycoffee.com/taintedcoffeepress/josholsensixmonths.html

FULL DISCLOSURE: I don’t know how to classify Josh Olsen’s work. Partially that’s because—

1) I am a librarian by trade, and

2) I am not an academic

3) I do not possess a MFA or an Arts & Culture column in the Huffington Post and therefore I do not I feel that I have the subject expertise or authority to wax eloquent on literary genres and the criterion for placing creative works into neatly (or mostly) defined categories.

What I am, however, is a voracious reader and fellow writer. So my stab at articulating what Olsen’s work is comes directly from nuanced—albeit impressionistic—observations of his work against the smorgasbord of things I’ve read and written personally.

Some back story: I first discovered Olsen’s work in New York Quarterly, where his poem “KT and I,” was first featured before finding a home in his debut book, Six Months. As such, I’ve been operating under the assumption that what I’d been reading for the last month was, in fact, poetry. Poetry in the rhythm-and-meter-and-not-prose sense of the word.

FLASH FORWARD TO SEPT. 17, 2011

Imagine my surprise when I hear from the author’s mouth via a BlogTalkRadio podcast that he categorizes the contents of his first book as flash fiction, not poetry. Grrrreat, I thought, I’ve got to rethink my entire book review!

But I’m not going to rewrite the review. I’ve decided, at least for the purposes of this post that Six Months is a collection of prose poems—author distinction be-damned. I suspect, somehow, that the flash fiction label was chosen out of convenience, and not necessarily derived from the firm conviction that what Olsen is consciously creating is fiction, not poetry. Else why submit “KT and I” as a poem to New York Quarterly in the first place?

On my first read, questions surrounding this book persisted beyond superficial ponderings on genre and carried into the collection itself. This pervasive sense of whaddayamakeofthis plagued me. There’s a kind of tension where the reader (at least, this reader) is unsure of how s/he should feel or think about the tone and execution of the material.

Is Olsen being serious? Are these poems about chronic masturbation and diarrhea mere sophomoric shock-jockery, or is there something more going on here?

But before you think I’m throwing this poor man (or his editor) under the bus, you should up know up front that I admire him and what he’s done with Six Months. Because my suspicion is, that beneath the obvious campiness of the book—whose back cover bears the tag line ‘I returned to the womb every six months’—is a poet who is using humor quite slyly, quite heartbreakingly, to wrestle with somber themes of domestic abuse, sexuality, the woes of working-class parenthood, and childhood trauma.

A graduate from the Sharon Olds School of the Earthy-and-Unapologetically-Autobiographical-Body-Celebrators, Olsen comes off as the keeper of dirty little masculine secrets. And I suspect that many readers (particularly young male readers of a certain counter-cultural stripe) will enjoy Olsen for this very reason—for the pure joy of nodding their heads in affirmation of the oft-comical, at times humiliating male libidinal impulse.

Take a cue from a line in the opening poem, “On a Train Back to Michigan” (I’m ignoring line breaks):

“Doubting her consciousness, I took my time eyeing the soft skin of her inner thighs”

AND this line from “Apple Pie”—

“[I] quietly masturbated through a grainy VHS copy of Class of Nuke ‘Em High.”

OR this line from “Last Night’s Ice Storm, (Pt. 1)”—

“I just shaved my pubic hair. Toilet paper clung to the razor nicks on my scrotum.”

I imagine that some people might dismiss this book or find it distasteful because of the incessant genital schtick Olsen keeps returning to. But the appeal, for me anyway, is Olsen’s plainspoken, working-class hero persona and his reckless, at times ridiculous, joie de corps—it’s what makes Six Months a pleasurable, quick read. Some writers are so abstract/academic/avant garde/high-falutin’ that reading their work feels very much like trying to make sense of the ingredients listed on the back of a bag of Doritos; a mostly useless exercise that leaves 97% of the population frustrated and scraping to remember the prefixes they’d forgotten long ago in high school Chemistry.

Josh Olsen is not one of those writers. He lets you have it without affectation.

Further, to counterbalance all the boxing-the-clown shmuh, there are these redeeming lines that belie deeper, more poignant artistic reaching toward the themes I mentioned earlier. Some gems:

*My sexual revolution peaked in the first grade

*Sometimes he confronts me. Asks where I’ve been all this time. Why I’ve been running away.

*Sometimes I wake up feeling guilty. That I should make amends. Should write him a letter and let him meet his grandkids.

*I had not punched a hole in the wall, I pounded

*I waited for the day when Jack would write his poem

*[I] wondered whose god he prayed to

*My daughter’s condition made me feel dirty

*She used to smell cold, like snow or cucumbers

*I forgotabout the condom, stairwell, miscarriage, and Rodney

*He thought I was there to throw my son in the water

AND my personal favorite—taken from the piece “My Fear, My Guilt,” where Olsen pits his own uneasy desires against the biology of his daughter’s young slumber party guests:

“I feared them and their bodies, humming with potential, moments
From bursting, seconds away from something I would desire.”

That’s the zinger for me in this book—when Olsen actually gets down to the marrow of what it is he seemingly wants to talk about as a writer, but never quite indulges fully (presumably because it is either too painful or too personal or against his creative principles to do so).

What I’d like to see in Olsen’s next book is a total shirking of the locker room antics for a more raw examination of the family and parenting dynamics hinted at in this collection.

There’s an exchange from the poem “Carpet” between the poet and his girlfriend KT that I think is particularly to the point (bold added):

““You should write more about your family,” KT suggested.
“But that’s all I ever write about!” I replied, and KT told me that
I had been too gentle.”

KT—I couldn’t agree more. So, what say you Olsen? Let’s dig in.

In short, spend some time with Olsen’s first book. And when you do, what you’ll find is the promising beginnings of a richly human conversation on fatherhood, relationships, the body, and sexual impulse related with a hefty dose of winsome self-deprecation and nervous humor.

WRITERS: Interested in having your book or chapbook reviewed for this website? Email Christeene at laliterati83@gmail.com