Strange News from Another Star by Herman Hesse

  Herman Hesse was one of my first entry points into philosophical literature and I have fond memories of Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game, and Demian among others. That said, it has been years—decades, even—since I’ve last picked up one of his books. After my lengthy hiatus, I’ve picked up Strange News from Another Star, a collection of short stories that was fine, but not as affecting as his more substantial works.      

        The collection revolves around a few key themes, including outlandish wishes, mystical journeys into the beyond, and the hidden significance of seemingly everyday phenomena. The tone reads very much like a book of fairytales where an objective and factual tone recounts details that are unrealistic. There are some stories that are more introspective in nature and narrated in first person. Whether inward- or outward-focused, the book reaches for the allegorical, the eternal, and the strange.

Two of the stories that were most engaging to me were “Augustus” and “Faldum”, both of which revolve around odd wishes. In the case of “Augustus,” a mother is granted the ability to make a wish for her son (the actual mechanics are thankfully never explained). In a panic, she makes the wish that everyone will love him. Augustus then follows a hedonistic and philandering path similar to that of Dorian Gray. He’s given the opportunity to make a wish of his own and starts to turn his path around. The premise works, even if it’s essentially just a “monkey’s paw” premise. “Faldum,” by contrast, involves wishes fulfilled. Everyone in this strange village is able to make a wish from a wandering merchant—and their wishes are instantly granted. It’s a little mysterious that they don’t all wish for something more ambitious. Most just ask for a modest sum of money and then go about their way. The wishes that matter are for those of two hermits. One wants nothing more than to talk to nobody and play his violin, so he ascends into the sky and is never seen again. The other hermit wishes to become a mountain—and does, literally. He’s a mountain for ages until many generations of people die and he erodes and then is given the chance to reunite with the music, essentially become music, alongside the violinist. It’s a strange, if engaging, concept.

“Faldum” also stands out in the collection due to the richness of its imagery. The whole opening sequence offers a frame narrative replete with description of the main character’s journey to Faldum. Several other stories have lush passages, including “A Dream Sequence” and “Iris.” I was surprised by how focused Hesse was on the details; I typically think of his writing as more broad strokes with more emphasis on philosophical exposition.

“A Dream Sequence” and “Flute Dream” were stories of less impact on me. They’re imagistic, symbolic, and mystical in nature, offering suggestions of deeper meaning. The challenge with stories like this (and dream sequences in general) is that their internal coherence is often lacking. We have to accept that the symbols have significance despite not having the same access to the writer’s inner states.

“Strange News from Another Star” and “Iris” are somewhat more memorable since they have a more clear focus. While maintaining some aspects of the dreamy free association of Hesse’s more esoteric works, there’s a little more narrative development. In “Strange News from Another Star,” the character goes in search of flowers in far and distant lands because nothing is worse than not adorning their dead with flowers—meanwhile, he arrives in lands full of war and death. “Iris,” meanwhile, follows a man who is drawn into the iris flower and falls in love with a woman named Iris, who refuses to marry him because he can’t commit to her spontaneous inclinations, favouring instead a life of the mind.

Hesse’s novels often revolve around duality. To my recollection, Narcissus and Goldmund, Demian, Steppenwolf, and The Glass Bead Game all revolve around the idea that the mind and the body exist in a challenging duality. There’s the implication that intellect and hedonism exist at opposite ends of a spectrum that struggle against one another within people. The same exploration happens in stories like “Iris” but the story isn’t quite as developed.

A few of the stories address the great beyond; there’s a common motif of crossing a threshold into the unknown and the conflation of death and open gates to the great beyond pop up as mutual metaphors. 

Overall, it was nice to revisit Hesse’s writing. The short stories are a quick entry point into some of the major themes in Hesse’s oeuvre. The lush descriptions are a delight, and I did find myself thinking as I read, particularly around which wishes I would make, given the opportunity, that would not end in disaster.

If you’re looking for an early entry point to Hesse, or if you’re a completionist of his oeuvre, Strange News from Another Star may be worth your while—but in my humble opinion, it would be better to read at least a few of his novels first.

Happy reading!

Multiple Choice Alejandro Zambra

  I’m not quite sure what to make of Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice. It’s a really unique project that turns a standardized test into an authentic literary enterprise. Zambra explores the possibility of a standard set of A-B-C-D-E options turning into something more profound and interesting, blending poetry, autobiography (maybe), and fiction.

The book is divided into five sections. The first requires readers to pick the term that doesn’t match the heading or the other terms. The second is about putting sentences into their correct sequence. The third is about completing the sentences (fill-in-the-blanks), while the fourth requires readers to eliminate a sentence or sentences within a short story. The final section is reading comprehension and offers some more substantial (though still only roughly 5 page) stories. 

But Zambra is tricky. While there might be a bubblesheet to fill in at the back of the book, there is no answer key, nor could there be. The questions put readers into challenging positions and the stakes feel even bigger than actual standardized test questions. Consider, for example, the excluded term question for “Teach.” Readers are expected to pick one of the following that does not fit: A) preach, B) control, C) educate, D) initiate, E) screech. Now, I’d like to think that as a teacher I don’t “screech” but if I take that out it leaves “preach” and “control” still in the mix; there’s no good option. Similarly, some of the options double-up. Like for “Promise” the options read from A-E as complete / silence / promise / complete silence. Conversely, Zambra includes questions where all of the options seem good. For instance, the word “Letter” has the options for A) uppercase, B) lowercase, C) cursive, D) dead, and E) silent. Likewise, “Cut” allows for erase / annul / blot / expunge / wound. All of them are viable choices, and so it forces you to reflect on what your personal biases are. What seems most poetic to you?

Zambra is able to make use of structures to allow for multiple options, a choose-your-own-perspective with carefully crafted options. For instance, in one of the fill-in-the-blank questions, he provides the statement, “And if they have any ________ left, that’s what _____________ for.” The options offer very different possibilities for engaged readers. The options range for innocuous and innocent to politically charged to deeply depressing. Here’s what the options say if filled in:

And if they have any energy left, that’s what sports are for.

And if they have any hope left, that’s what reality is for.

And if they have any illusions left, that’s what the void is for.

And if they have any dissent left, that’s what the cops are for.

And if they have any neurons left, that’s what crack cocaine is for.

The cynicism and nihilistic mindset allows readers to choose their fate, but almost none of them are good ones. Each adds dimension in an interesting way.

When asked to sequence statements into a cohesive narrative, there are similar disruptions to our thinking. Some resequencing questions are standard and legitimate, but they all seem just a little bit off from what you might want to conclusively decide. For instance, in the piece “The second” you’re given the following sequence:

1. You try to remember your first Communion.

2. You try to remember your first masturbation.

3. You try to remember the first time you had sex.

4. You try to remember the first death in your life.

5. And the second.

The answers put you in a position where you have to “try” to remember something “and the second.” It feels a little bit off because if you’re remembering the second, then surely you’d remember the first, no? It also places you in a position that implies that you have to forget the others. For your reference, and to decide what selective forgetting you’ll engage in today, the available answers are as follows:

1. 1-5-2-3-4

2. 1-2-5-3-4

3. 1-2-3-5-4

4. 4-5-1-2-3

5. 4-3-2-1-5

The sequencing questions really help to emphasize how the order of presentation can impact our perception of a narrative. Several of the pieces are essentially flash fictions, but flash fictions that offer multiple paths at once. For example, there’s a piece called “Two hundred twenty-three.” It reads as follows:

1. You remember the freckles on her breasts, on her legs, on her belly, on her ass. The exact number: two hundred twenty-three. One thousand two hundred and seven days ago there were two hundred twenty-three.

2. You reread the messages she used to send you: They are beautiful, funny. Long paragraphs, vivid, complex sentences. Warm words. She writes better than you do.

3. You remember the time you drove five hours just to see her for ten minutes. It wasn’t ten minutes, it was the whole afternoon, but you like to think it was only ten minutes.

4. You remember the waves, the rocks. Her sandals, a wound on her foot. You remember your eyes daring from her thighs to her eyelashes.

5. You never got used to being with her. You never got used to being without her. You remember when she said, in a whisper, as if to herself: Everything is OK.

Option D is to go 2-3-4-5-1. Reading it in that mode seems to create a greater sense of loss, an intimation of time passing, and the degeneration of a relationship. Reading it start to finish (option E) feels, in some ways, like a more complete story—although I feel like section 2 should be closer to the end. It’s difficult to make a choice. 

In other sections, Zambra maintains a playfulness that makes this poetry test impossible to grade. In a piece called “A kick in the balls”, the statements are presented as follows:

1. You think of all the people, living or dead, near or far, men or women, from your country or abroad, who have reason to kick you in the balls.

2. You wonder if you deserve a kick in the balls.

3. You wonder if you deserve to be hated. You wonder if anyone really hates you.

4. You wonder if you hate anyone. You wonder if you hate the people who hate you.

5. Insomnia wounds and accompanies you.

Each of the answers, though, is mutually exclusive. You either get to choose 1-1-1-1-1 or 2-2-2-2-2 or 3-3-3-3-3 or 4-4-4-4-4 or 5-5-5-5-5. Despite there seeing to be a connection between the items, you’re only able to put yourself into a repetitive rumination. In “Rhyme”, the answers present uneven outcomes. The options are A) 5-1-2-3-4, B) 5-4-3-2-1, C) 1-2-3-4-5, D) 1-5-2-3-4, or E) 1-2-3-4. That’s a tricky one because it prevents you from selecting the statement that “you are not crazy”. If you’d like the statements for rhyme to try to the poem at home, here they are:

1. You search for words that rhyme with your first name.

2. You search for words that rhyme with your last name.

3. Your first and last names do not rhyme, but you search for words that rhyme with both your first and last names.

4. You search for words that don’t rhyme with either your first name or your last name, or with anything else.

5. You are not crazy.

Additionally, at least one poem in the sequencing section gives the same sequence for every option—and yet you might feel the resistance popping up in you that you want to revise, you want to create an option that isn’t there. The book is tricky in how it invites your contribution and then, when it doesn’t, you realize you’ve been trained the principles of rebellion: find the path you want, even if it isn’t there. In the poem “Scars,” the only option you’re provided is to read it sequentially, which goes like this:

1. You think about how the shortest distance between two points is the length of a scar.

2. You think: the introduction is the father, the climax is the son, and the resolution is the holy spirit.

3. You read books that are much stranger than the books you would write if you wrote.

4. You think, as if it were a discovery, that the last point in the line of time is the present.

5. You try to go from the general to the specific, even if the general is General Pinochet.

6. You try to go from the abstract to the concrete.

7. The abstract is the pain of others.

8. The concrete is the pain of others colliding with your body until you are completely invaded.

9. The concrete is something that can only grow.

10. Something like a tumor, or the opposite of a tumor: a child.

11. In your case, it’s a tumor.

The fatalism of the piece matches the fatalism of the options. You can only go so far, and yet…

At times, Zambra plays off this interactivity in a meta way. In one of the sections where you have select one for deletion, there’s a discussion of being a reader, a writer, a censor, all at once. Again, it’s a tricky one because the option is to delete none of the options. Every option after that refers to the previous option, meaning that no matter what you pick, you don’t get the power to delete any of these items:

1. I didn’t want to talk about you, but it’s inevitable.

2. I’m talking about you right now. And you’re reading this, and you know it’s about you.

3. Now I am words that you read and wish did not exist.

4. I hate you. 

5. You would like to have the power of a censor.

6. So no one else would ever read these words.

7. I hate you.

8. You ruined my life.

9. Now I am words you cannot erase.

There’s another section that is about the relationship between writing and truth and whether we have the power to remove portions of the narrative. It’s a complex and playful interplay of the details.

In one of the short stories in the reading comprehension section, there is a whole section about Chilean students learning to cheat that feels relevant. Zambra writes, “Even if we did nothing but study, we knew there would always be two or three impossible questions. We didn’t complain. We got the message: Cheating was just part of the deal” (66). What is really compelling here is a critique (or reflection, at least) of the education system that demands compliance with correct answers. The reflection continues, though, into a meditation on individualism: “I think that, thanks to our cheating, we were able to let go of some of our individualism and become a community. It’s sad to put it this way, but cheating gave us a sense of solidarity. Every once in a while we suffered from guilt, from the feeling that we were frauds—especially when we looked ahead to the future—but in the end our indolence and defiance prevailed” (66). I think this book could really help us to connect to those feelings of individualism and community. On the one hand, we are all creating individual answers (there’s no answer key, so no standard) but at the same time we are in dialogue with an extant discourse over which we have no control. 

Now that we have reached the end of the review, what would be the best way to summarize this text?

1. Which text? The review or the book?

2. Multiple Choice is a poetic experience that demands

3. Readers to engage with writers.

4. Writers to plan multiple avenues at once.

5. Happy reading for the audience of this review.

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

“No matter how simple some things might seem, they’re not, or at least not always.” So begins Banu Mushtaq’s story, “The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri.” The opening paragraph to the story reads like an artistic vision for what the short stories in Heart Lamp explore. The passage continues:

People behave in strange and illogical ways when they’re afraid they may have to take responsibility. I have reason to think about such things. The revelation that I can no longer justify my own erratic behaviour on these terms is a recent one, however; it came to me many years after the event itself. No doubt this awareness gradually became stronger over time, but, even so, various aspects of that incident jump up from the depths of my memory every now and then, with a thud and without any warning. (187)

This personal reflection from the story’s lawyer protagonist gives voice to the deeply human quality of the stories from this year’s International Booker Prize winner. Banu Mushtaq’s stories are probing, examining seemingly simple phenomenon and adding layers of nuance so that the “illogical ways” people behave are explained more richly. For a number of characters, indeed, their behaviours are ways of coping with the fear of taking responsibility. In “The Shroud,” for example, the main character promises to, but ultimately neglects to, buy a funeral shroud for a poor woman while she’s on her Hajj, and has a complete breakdown from the guilt. In “A Decision of the Heart,” there’s a complex interplay of conflict between a man, wife, and her mother-in-law, which prompts the son to get his mother married off. The conflicted impulses of the story read like a Dostoyevski novel, with characters engaging in self-destruction to avoid confronting their own flaws.

The declarative tone of the passage above is also reflective of why I think that of all this year’s International Booker Prize shortlist, Heart Lamp is most likely to be seen as a ‘classic.’ The collection is not afraid of making assertions about humanity and grapples with art’s most classic topics: love, death, marriage, birth, religion. 

The construction of the stories is also compelling. It’s here that I’ll have to offer my first disclaimer in reviewing Heart Lamp. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I tend not to enjoy the short story as a literary form as much as I do poetry or novels; they often feel to me like seeing a passing acquaintance rather than bonding with a close friend. Just as I start to get to know the characters, their story is done. I had a similar dilemma with Mushtaq’s stories, but to her credit the artful construction of the narratives is an intriguing twist on the genre. Many of the stories start with descriptions of a particular set of circumstances and characters before shifting mid-stream to their ‘real focus,’ that is, the main character and conflict. Besides the social-realism of the approach, I also appreciate the resonances it creates. For instance, characters in the first part of a story may be introduced and we hear about their marriage and children before the ‘real’ focus of the story kicks in and we see another angle for the topic through another set of eyes. The doubling effect, sometimes only noticeable upon review, lets the stories cover a lot of ground in relatively little space.

Beyond the construction of the stories, their actual use of language also feels ‘classic.’ There’s a directness in the writing that imbues it with the authority of “the Greats.” Mashtuq is self-assured and offers stylistic flourishes strategically. There’s a scene in the story “Fire Rain,” for instance, that recounts a man’s burial and subsequent exhumation. The imagery of the scene offers some unsavory details about the “rotten body in the brand new, starched shroud” (38). Given the circumstances of the burial, it was “too rotten for ritual bathing” and “the foul smell made them want to retch, but no one showed it on their faces” (38). In context, the scene rides the line of comic and macabre and the paragraph ends with some symbolism of jasmine buds that hadn’t bloomed before offering the phrase “not all blooms have the fortune of adorning a bride; some flowers bloom only for mausoleums” (38). The poetic line resonates beautifully and stands out as an example of Mashtuq’s style.

Another factor in making the book read like a classic is the use of an omniscient narrator in most of the stories, which affords Mushtaq the opportunity to comment on a number of perspectives and universalizes the characters’ experiences. At this point, I feel I need to offer an additional disclaimer. A lot of what the stories’ characters go through is far disconnected from my own experiences. The barrier is my own lack of knowledge, but the characters are generally Muslim Indians and it is sometimes difficult for me to interpret characters’ feelings, given the role of Islam in their lives. The failure to grapple with nuances is my own, but in my reading the characters are more like ‘figures’ in most of the stories. They have discernible purposes and traits but they did not yet feel fully resonant for me. Apologies to Mushtaq for my own experiential gap here.

It’s tempting with any collection to give a full play-by-play of each short story Heart Lamp has to offer, but documenting all twelve feels quite impossible, particularly given that there are stories nestled within other stories. One trend I would note is that across the collection, the endings are almost always satisfying. “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal,” the first story in the collection, depicts couples essentially competing with one another to show their love. One of the husbands says how he would build a Mahal for his wife to show how devoted he is to her. There’s some problems with this idea: first of all, it implies that she will die. At the conclusion of the story, his wife does indeed die and he remarries and talks about how much he loves his new wife—he never builds the Mahal. The discussion that follows was my first hint of Mushtaq’s craftsmanship for a fine ending.

My favourite ending is probably to the collection’s namesake. In “Heart Lamp,” a woman’s husband has lost all affection for her and is cavorting with another woman. Feeling desperately alone, the woman decides it is time to end her life. She circles the rooms of the house with kerosene, deciding which room would be best for self-immolation. The tension of the scene is finely crafted; it’s as if she is being controlled by some obscure force. You also feel concern for her sleeping children: would they escape the fire? She ends up outside, doused in kerosene, but before she ignites, her daughter comes out and makes the plea for her to stay. The central character “picked up the sobbing baby and hugged Salma to her chest, and, feeling as if she was being comforted, touched and understood by a friend, Mehrun’s eyes became heavy, and all she could say was, ‘Forgive me, my darling,’ as the darkness of the night was thawing” (111). I really love the phrasing of the ending: “the darkness of the night was thawing.” To me, that implies light. The idea of there being natural light, light of a different tenor, than the light that would have resulted from her ignition is such a great image to end the story on. It leaves things tense, tortured, but with that creeping light of optimism. 

Sadly, one of my favourite stories in the collection had the least satisfying conclusion. “The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri” is about a woman who works as a lawyer. She is separated from her husband and has two daughters that she can’t spend much time with, so she hires a private tutor. There’s a shroud of mystery around him as an outsider and she has concerns about leaving him alone with her daughters. There’s the implication that he, an unmarried man, might do something untoward. He’s surprisingly good with the girls, and even surprises their mother by having them stage a beautiful performance. One day the mother catches the three with oil all over their fingers in the kitchen and the teacher never shows his face in their house again. Supposedly, he got a fake recipe for making gobi manchuri. He’s obsessed with it. He eats it like I eat chips. For some reason, this breeds more distrust in the main character and everyone around. He’s framed as an unmanly man. It’s really weird and I was fascinated by it. It felt like a fun-house mirror of The Vegetarian by Han Kang—this guy that wanted to just eat his deep-fried cauliflower or whatever. The main character keeps hearing about this man trying to marry women but calling it off unless they can make gobi manchuri. The story ends by implying that he’s been fired from work, has married a woman, and that he beats her—but the main character still feels compelled to help him for some reason. It’s an understated tale that I thought was really compelling and the only of the stories that really felt like it ended too soon.

Peoples’ idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies take up their fair share of the stories. In that respect, “A Decision of the Heart” really shone as a perplexing nuance of desires. I also really liked the story “High-Heeled Shoe” and its symbolism. Like most stories, it offered multiple layers worth exploring. The story focuses on a man and wife who are in the process of renovating his house. He has chosen to sell off parts of it for rentals to make some extra money, meaning that he has also had to cut down the family’s mango tree. Throughout the story, different characters offer their reflections on the meaning of that mango tree to them, which has its own beauty. The real focus, though, is that the man is obsessed with his brother’s wife’s high-heeled shoe. He covets them (and her feet) as she floats through rooms. He becomes monomaniacal about it and his obsession makes him barge into a shop and demand they sell him the high-heeled shoes that match his sister-in-law’s. He makes his wife wear them, putting them on in a glass chair (like a reverse image of Cinderella?) even though they don’t fit and she can’t walk in them. He has already packed away her other shoes and she’s forced to walk home unevenly, eventually collapsing and hearing her unborn child calling out to her from the womb. The consequences of a man’s jealousy and obsession hit hard. “The Shroud” follows a similar path of unfulfilled desires and misplaced interests. I briefly mentioned that story earlier, so I won’t belabour the point here, but the fact that the main character loves shopping for herself (she buys a carpet and makes her husband lug it around during their Hajj) while not buying a kafan for her poor neighbour leads to a grief and guilt as literary as “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The desperation she experiences to fulfil her promise when it’s too late is as moving as it as pathetic. I loved it.

“Soft Whispers” and “A Taste of Heaven” are the two other stories that I found to be most noteworthy. Like the others, they are rich and layered. “Soft Whispers”, written in first person, has such a wonderful sequence embedded in the middle where the young girl is at a pond where a boy is trapping birds for the entertainment of other children. I can’t quote the whole sequence, but Mushtaq depicts his mischief beautifully. The boy asks the girl if she wants an egg from the bird he has trapped. He then proceeds to slit its throat, cut open its guts, and pull the egg out for her. The other kids are all clambering to see it, and so she holds it closed in her fist and as they all try to see, she crushes it. It feels symbolic. Then, the boy dives underwater and pops up and kisses her on the cheek. She sobs and tells her mom all about it. Flashing forward, the boy becomes a religious leader. The sequence has such a strong focus. In “A Taste of Heaven,” we see more childhood mischief. Again, the story is really about other things for most of it, but essentially the kids have an aunt (?) that lost her husband when she was young and she never remarried. One girl gives the woman’s ja-namaz (prayer rug) from her wedding to a boy so he can clean oil off of his bike. Despite being stoic and pleasant about everything, the woman essentially has a breakdown over this. Long story short, the children come together to conspire and the woman walks in. The most mischievous of the three children gives her a Pepsi and tells her that it’s the drink from the afterlife, that she has indeed passed away and that they are angels. She asks: if she has made it to the afterlife, where is her husband? They sprinkle flowers from behind her and say that he is there but that she musn’t look at him. The whole scene plays out like something out of The Decameron or 1001 Nights. After that, though, the whole family is placed in a position where they essentially have to keep up the ruse that she’s in heaven and all she drinks is Pepsi and the kids are worried about the guilt of murdering her with malnutrition. The whole story was both entertaining and troubling. It’s certainly one of the most memorable in the collection.

So here we are. It’s the end of the year. I left Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp as the final book for my reading goal (70 books) and my final review of all of this year’s International Booker Prize shortlist. Heart Lamp won, so it only seemed appropriate to leave it for last. While I have some contextual barriers and preferences for novels over short stories, Mushtaq still offered a good deal of discussion-worthy stories. They’re provocative and well-wrought. Where the characters feel figural, the stories themselves achieve, I think, what ‘classic’ literature aimed to accomplish: Mushtaq offers a clear vision for humanity’s biggest issues: life, death, birth, marriage, religion—alongside all those other feelings of guilt and jealousy that pop up along the way. Every International Booker Prize shortlist has been so different and compelling in their own ways, and I’m glad that Mushtaq’s English translation has found such success.

To another year of reading.

All the best.

Still Mostly True by Brian Andreas

       In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger invented Instagram, which is still one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. Instagram has been the launching pad for a number of poets’ careers, for better or for worse, capitalizing on short-form poems with just one or two sentences with line breaks and maybe a doodled accompaniment. Often these poems take the form of tidbits of wisdom or advice. Often their tone is designed to be relatable. Well, with Brian Andreas’ 1994 collection Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings, we’re not quite at the age of Instagram poetry, but we’re in a similar mode of an outsider’s “unpracticed” hand.

Andreas provides a series of short poems, the collection of which can be read start to finish in one half-hour sitting. Most of the poems are two or three sentences with some silly conceit, accompanied by a doodled image that is simultaneously childish and grotesque. Even the fonts of the book are cartoonish—one the huge print of a children’s book, the other the artist’s chicken scratch.

Most of the poems, I have to admit, I felt compelled to gloss over. Here’s a sample of a representative one that I feel encapsulates the simplicity of structure and the not-entirely-landing-humour of the collection: “He won the grand / prize of a vacuum / cleaner & all the / canned goods he / could carry & / when they told him / he couldn’t believe it. // I thought I was / buying drink tickets, / he said” (“Winning Ticket”).

There are a couple of poems in the collection that touch on something sincere. Maybe it’s because it’s such a naive approach, but once in a while the poems hit on something deeper. I’m not going to pretend that these poems will revolutionize our interior worlds, but two stood out as touching reflections.

One untitled drawing is accompanied by the following poem:

he has a hole
where his
heart used to
be because
it fell out when he was running from scary
things one night in a dream & it hurts all the
time now & he doesn’t know how to fix it &
sometimes I think he doesn’t even remember that it’s gone

I appreciate this sense of lack. It’s a bit lackluster to chalk it up to a dream but if you stretch your imagination a little, it feels a little more meaningful.

The other poem gets stupider but there’s still an emotional core worth talking about. The poem goes as follows: “he wore a pot on his head in all / kinds of weather. / I never learned / to cook / I got it / after my / mother died. / he said. I just / know it would / make her happy / that I’m using / it.” Sure, the premise is dumb and implausible, but there’s something sweet about not using the pot for its intended purpose but wanting to bring comfort to his deceased mother.

Anyway, the poetry collection isn’t particularly memorable. It’s not especially developed; the poems wash over you in rapid succession and once they’re done, I was ready to stop thinking about them. The drawings are whimsical but, again, don’t have enough of a distinct visual style to leave a lasting impact.

Nonetheless, happy reading!