{"id":27531,"date":"2021-01-19T13:33:39","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T19:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=27531"},"modified":"2021-01-19T13:33:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T19:33:39","slug":"book-report-whiskey-words-a-shovel-i-by-r-h-sin-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/19\/book-report-whiskey-words-a-shovel-i-by-r-h-sin-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: whiskey words & a shovel I<\/i> by r.h. Sin (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BookAs you might remember, I bought this book online from ABC Books<\/a> during the Great Apausening last Spring. I started it after January 2, so this is the first book I completed in the 2021 Winter Reading Challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Well, the author mentions early in the book that he’s widely quoted (in the same poem that he knocks Trump), and apparently he’s a going thing and a New York Times best seller. This book is, after all, published by a major publisher (Andrews McMeel), but it’s not my bag, baby.<\/p>\n

I mean, you know I knocked Like the Pieces of Driftwood<\/em><\/a> for its sentences with line breaks. You know by now, gentle reader, that I like longer lines with rhythm, cadence, good mouthfeel, and evocative imagery. This book is more modern, with short lines with rare concrete imagery.<\/p>\n

For example, one of the poems starts like this (presented in a snippet, in an image, to make it harder for poetry poachers like Harvey to scrape them into collections of his own for sale for five bucks–what, fifteen years ago and I’m still bringing it up?):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, it’s very modern in appearance, cadence, and execution. Some of the stuff that’s very short kinda hits the good haiku koan kind of thing, but the longer pieces don’t tend to work. Although I can certainly see them in spots where they’re the kind of thing that could easily appear on an image that’s passed around on Facebook or something.<\/p>\n

As to the topic matter, basically, the poems have three threads:<\/p>\n