Assorted Thoughts On Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me

-Mark Leidner is intensely clever.  This book is so dense with new ideas, so full of surprising juxtapositions that it puts many of the other books on my shelves to shame.

-These poems appreciate eloquence, but they understand that miscommunication is inevitable.

-The town I grew up in had woods and streams and swamps.  Reading this book reminds me of all the exploring I did as a little kid, mostly alone.

-While this book is, in many ways, a reflection of modern America, I’m sure that I’ll reread it in twenty years and love it just as much.

-These poems aren’t afraid of offending us.  They reflect the full spectrum of the real world; why can’t the most gentle man on the whole planet have a pedophile for a neighbor?

-Can a poem be socially awkward?  Awkwardly social?

-A sympathetic narrator ought to have doubts, regrets, shortcomings, etc.  I’m not looking for poems that claim to have all the answers.

-How many poets can write about sex without it feeling gratuitous or melodramatic?

-If I wanted to prove to a non-poetry reader that poetry is alive and well, I’d feel confident that this book could get the job done.

-It’s not easy to be funny.  Poetry that tries to be funny usually falls flat.  Leidner has a real gift, an effortless deadpan that makes his poems uncomfortable to read at times.  He’s got to be kidding.  He says he’s not kidding.

-Is it possible that someone could be content after reading the following two excerpts from “Romantic Comedies” and not feel the urge to read the rest of the poem, the rest of the book?

Everyone in his life has drowned and he hates dogs and she’s a collegiate swimming coach with a thousand dogs.

He is Norway but she is holding out for infinite fjords.