I Read Poetry Collections: Sophomore Slump by Leigh Chadwick

 

Sophomore Slump by Leigh Chadwick

This is Chadwick’s second poetry collection from Malarkey Books. If like me you’re not an American, then perhaps you might find it useful to know that a sophomore year is the second year of attending a college or school; colloquially extended to any second season in, for example, sports or similar.

The book’s cover is styled with the CD cover for the (fictional) Leigh Chadwick album Sophomore Slump. Inside it’s revealed that it’s not just an album, it’s a special edition extended album, including demos, b-sides, singles, duets and so on. The kind of thing to offer completionist fans, stuffed with curiosities and rarities. Another way that the phrase sophomore slump gets used is in describing what’s sometimes called “the difficult second album.” Chadwick is ironically/sincerely trying to manage our expectations.

I’m not sure how well equipped I am to review this collection.

What happens in most of these poems is that a normal or everyday event either extends in a train of thought or makes a left turn, in both cases becoming something unusual and unexpected. So in I WONDER IF YOU WILL ALWAYS BE GOOD AT BEING MY HUSBAND, they buy pizza, only eat the crust, muse on husbands, animal husbandry and on to bomb shelters and ostrich hearts. In J.LO DRESSES UP AS THE INTERNET WHILE I AM GIVEN A GRAMMY FOR WALKING IN A STRAIGHT LINE, they begin by masturbating, then piss sunflowers, are given a Grammy for pissing sunflowers, are given more Grammys for various activities, they invite us over to eat sirloin from Lady Gaga’s meat dress and then are given a Grammy after we have sex.

Some of them are jokes, and pretty good. AN EXCERPT FROM TAYLOR SWIFT’S DIARY ENTRY WRITTEN SEVEN MONTHS AFTER BREAKING UP WITH TAYLOR LAUTNER, is hilarious. Some of them are jokes and not funny at all and that’s the damn point (A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF PLACES TO HIDE FROM A BULLET). Chadwick talks about gun violence and other violence, about sex and living, about parenthood and relationships and music. Food, celebrities, poetry, this poetry collection, children, TV, the previous poetry collection, memories, death.

Maybe reading this over two days was the wrong move, overwhelming, the pieces hitting like hammerblows, again and again and again, and dipping into it between other things would have been better. Or maybe it wouldn’t and without the impact, without holding them all in my head I wouldn’t have seen the repeated strategies, the callbacks, the structure and development of ideas.

I’m not sure how well equipped I am to review this collection.

Read This: A delirious ride as trivia touches the desperately important and mundane reality subsumes a greater imaginary universe
Don’t Read This: A lot that doesn’t make sense with an arch, mannered, ironic scaffold that demands you take it as it wants rather than how you wish
Disclosure: Malarkey Books sent me a review copy