These (Chap) Books Will Change Your Life - The Emperor's Sofa by Greg Santos and A Soft That Touches Down & Removes Itself by David Tomaloff.

We are so poetry this week and so digging it. We have said before that at times, it just feels obligatory, how can you want to write and not read poetry, seems wrong, without poetry where else would we try to figure out how to be sparse and lyrical and say in just a few lines, and sometimes, many times, more beautifully at that, what we say in whole stories, poems being these multicolored explosions of electricity bending their way through and around whatever comes before them in quick blasts, here and gone, but still lingering. Which leads us to The Emperor's Sofa by Greg Santos, a former and soon, quite soon, like this week, contributor to This Zine Will Change Your Life, and yes there is certainly some pluggage going on here, and A Soft That Touches Down & Removes Itself by David Tomaloff who we have yet to meet, but somehow feels like someone we need to spend some time with soon, you hear that Tomaloff? Good. Anyway, the chaps, both of which are great and well-crafted reads, vibrant and focused, eschewing the sweeping, for the here, now, and what's happening in front of you, us, the reader, whoever. With Santos, we get an ongoing commentary about how this may be what poems are supposed to look like, love, mysteries and real life, but with a dose of humor, a dash of pop culture, and a wink, riffing on love, but using the Hulk to communicate it, because he can, and because you will dig it. And then there is the Tomaloff, working the personal, a series of moments and exchanges, witty communications rife with metaphor and imagery between the author and some unidentified woman, who won't take his shit, is not impressed with his verbiage or observations, but stays with him in the thing they are in, this relationship, their discourse, and the omnipresent tug-of-war we call relationships and are always trying to work through, work out and just make work, ideally with a smile and some wry commentary to make it not just bearable, but fun, because there can be fun, right? Of course there can. Both chaps then just may change your life, but even if they don't, they still need to be consumed, because poetry needs to be consumed, explosions all, here for a moment, electric and bound to change something.