This Book Will Change Your Life - Rabbit Punch! by the Greg Santos.

"There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry."

- Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry"

Travel. Read. Eat poetry. Happiness. We do not read enough poetry and every time we do, we say that here. There are poets we love. Jason Fisk. Though he claims he is not a poet. Laura Cherry. Seth Berg. BL Pawelek. Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal. We read them because they are so interesting, and aim so high, and because we are so biased, because we know them, publish them, and love them. And the Greg Santos is no different. We read him because when we first met him he wrote about the Hulk, and we loved that, because of his humor, and his use of pop culture. And here we are again, reading, and traveling, and eating poetry, in this case Rabbit Punch! by the Santos. Which again, we are biased, because we love him too, and because we are shallow and excited to see Hooray from This Zine Will Change Your Life and The Great Hoarder from Daddy Cool included in the collection. But it's more than that as well. Santos delights in language as he riffs on the "Macho Man," Paris Hilton and zombies, the work is full of joy, and when we read him we are happy. So, we do hope you will hit the Rabbit Punch!, as it will surely change your life, and we do hope you will suggest other poets we can eat, because we have a lot of love to give, we are happy to be happy, and we are really fucking hungry.

These Poetry (Chap) Books Will Change Your Life - Haunts, Emergency Room Wrestling and a patchwork of rooms furnished by mistakes.

There is travel and read and we were thinking poetry and writers and publishers we love, but mostly we were thinking that we must read more poetry, it seems like a requisite, can you write and not read poetry, it seems wrong, and we are not anti-poetry certainly, but we are crazy-ass compulsively driven to read fiction, so there you are, and here we are, traveling and reading poetry of all kinds by writers and from publishers we love. See how that works? Good.

We begin with "a patchwork of rooms furnished by mistakes" by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite, This Zine Will Change Your Life contributor and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee J. Bradley and published by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Deckfight Press, which is up to all kinds of wonderful things. All good yes, sure, but what about the collection itself? "a patchwork" is a wonderfully Bradleyesque series of mini-pop saturated relationship implosions which is reminiscent of Local H's 12 Angry Months, and richly captures why Bradley is the well-deserved King of Pain when it comes to break-up morass.

We recently had the chance to read with TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Laura Cherry, who was such an absolute pleasure to listen to, humorous and touching, refined, but with a wink, and this despite all sorts of intrusions and bar noise. We were particularly taken with "7. Lila: Found Poem" which is part of a suite, is that the right word, of Lila poems, all of which are in "Haunts," and what's so great about this collection, is how it takes a sweeping look at not just the life span, both the grand and mundane, marriage, birth, work, neighbors, love, loss all of it, but life lived, fully, richly, and yes, sorry, poetically.

Finally, and what is maybe the greatest surprise in this sort of round-up, "Emergency Room Wrestling" by the dirty poet, who we are embarrassed to say we were not nearly familiar enough with before this chap, but were geeked to hop in based on the publisher, Words Like Kudzu Press, and its fearless leader, the endlessly awesome Eye Scorpion herself, Karen Lillis, alone, but wow, what an amazing collection of pieces, all vivid and slamming, and so full of death, endless death, but less upsetting or overwhelming, than absorbing, fully absorbing, as life seems so unbelievably fleeting in these pages, a breath here, a brain injury there, then gone in a flash, a sad, sad flash, no time to react, because it's all done, all of it.

A Providence Charleston Cousins Taylor Books You Can Make Him Like You This American Life Nerves of Steel West Virginia podcast photo essay wrap-up.

Barry Graham, Ben Tanzer, Scott McClanahan and Angel Babies

We were Providence for the Cousins Reading Series with the William Walsh and Laura Cherry, as well as, Timothy Gager and Ray Charbonneau. We Were Taylor Books and You Can Make Him Like You. We were Nerves of Steel West Virginia with the Barry Graham, Scott McClanahan, Jay Hill and sublime Harold Ray. And now we are home, photo essay and Nerves of Steel podcast in hand. Rejoice. And enjoy.

Ray Charbonneau, Ben Tanzer and Timothy Gager

Laura Cherry and William Walsh

Taylor Books - Charleston, WV

Harold Ray

Jay Hill and Ben Tanzer

Cousins. Tonight. So hit it.