To fully appreciate the poetry of Caleb Bouchard, you need to know who Rebecca Black is, will want some familiarity with the writing of Charles Bukowski and Deepak Chopra, and without a doubt should love The Smiths (but why wouldn’t you? Who are you?). With an economy of verse that still manages wit and bombast, Bouchard’s collection New Poems in Georgia Font throws itself into a fun freefall through the days of the week and the rabbit hole of pop culture. It is poetry of the contemporary moment, reveling in a stretched- out present of scenesters, yuppies, URLs, Christopher Hitchens’ literary criticism, Tumblr, and the ubiquitous cyber symbol of love: the “<3.” Despite the collection’s enthrallment with the Now, “Interruption” is a poem that stops to reflect on the proliferating, mutable figure of the poet and pays homage to “the old poets,” who the speaker insists he prefers to the young ones. This narrative preference nods toward the collection’s references to Byron, Ezra Pound and ee cummings as much as Sarah Palin, David Letterman, and Michel Gondry. Like most works that celebrate the kitsch and camp of mass culture and sprawling technologies, Poems in Georgia Font resists a hierarchical approach to taste. Instead, it raises its glass to the male psyche and toasts the multiplicities and magnitude of its perversity. (Julia Cooper)
Caleb Bouchard, 50 pgs, (self-published), calebbouchard.bigcartel.com, $5.00