Derek works in graduate student career development and is (believe it or not) one of the world's foremost experts on the history of bookmobiles. Follow Derek on Twitter @bookmobility and on Instagram @bookmobility.
When it comes to poetry, timelessness is a red herring, or a white elephant, or some other distractingly burdensome creature. When I read poems, I’m not looking for verse that stands for the ages, whatever that might mean. I want unsettling rhythms, alien sounds, a sharp (and hopefully damned-weird) eye on the now.
So I’ve found Alien vs. Predator, a recent book of poetry by Michael Robbins, entirely thrilling.Robbins writes poems that draw on a rich literary past, sure. (“John Milton jumps out of my birthday cake;” “I’m not with you in Rockland, a fortiori.”) But also and even more, his poetry is fantastically, ecstatically of the present, our present of shiny brands and celebrity gossip. Like Jell-O molds studded with carrot and cabbage, Robbins’ poems are speckled with words and names and sounds both intensely familiar and pleasurably alien. Words that surround us all the time (on billboards, in magazines, on screens, in whispers) but pull you up short, a bit smilingly stunned, in the context of a poem.
Words like these, all of which you can find in the disorienting, orgiastic, just-plain-peculiar Alien vs. Predator:
Best Buy
Camel Light
Britney Spears
Fruit Stripe gum
Ghostface Killah
Dyncorp
Pizza Hut (“tell me, Ghostface, if you know, / why Bagdhad wears a black hood / and the Green Zone’s Pizza Hut has power.”)
erectile dysfuction
Paxil (“The nation’s pets are high on Paxil.”)
droid
Meerkat Manor (“I get my news from Meerkat Manor“)
Cylon
Al Jazeera
American Apparel
Listerine
Auto-Tune (“I wake to Auto-Tune, and take my waking / out into a orchard, where I traipse.”)
Maybelline
ATM (“I make love to an ATM. I enrich uranium.”)
RPG
Mr. Peanut
Wu-Tang Clan
Shark Week (“I turn on Shark Week, plan a killing spree.”)
Theraflu
Kinko’s
Doritos (“Your tribe’s Doritos are infested with a stegosaur.”)
Forever 21
Red Lobster
Kool-Aid
Snapple (“O brave new world / that has such Snapple in it!”)
AMBER Alerts
Xbox (“Let’s put Christ back in Xbox.”)
Scantron
Care Bears
Whole Foods
Red Bull
Safeway
CSI: Miami
Ramada (“at the Ramada, where it’s always Ramadan”)
H&M
Sharper Image
hazmat
Tootsie Pop (“by that wise old Zen master, the Tootsie Pop owl,”)
Fruit of the Loom (“by the horrible man-grapes of Fruit of the Loom”)
K-Y
Jay-Z
Thebook, in other words, is like an obstacle course riddled with the wreckage of American capitalism. (Or maybe like reading Howl while watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians.) And if that doesn’t scare you, then Alien v. Predator is definitely for you.
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