Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (Penguin Poets)

I did not love Lockwood's highly referential and metatextual poetry at first: the layers of puns and odd references. Yet the changing landscape of social media fluent poetry has led me to really appreciate Lockwood's highly colloquial poetry because her work demands attention and engagement, rewards re-reading, and resists conventional turns of phrase and idea. This collection was seemingly made famous by the spreading of "Rape Joke," which contains Lockwood's more focus on contemporary concerns and seems made to be viral, but her other poetry is far more slippery, and this is clearly on display here. If you were hesitant a few years ago or thought that this collection was too-clever-by-half, I strongly suggest a re-read these few years ago. I found it very rewarding.

I wish I knew how to unhinge my mind like Lockwood to free it from literal, confining prose-thinking. Her poetry steps into a temple of sorts, a special place of worship for the imagination. Her poems are like Kandinsky's paintings: a lot of non-sense is going on and on the surface it looks like a mass of confusion and can of worms jerked open by a predator but you don't care because you've having such a good time watching the show from the sidelines, where some character from Twin Peaks is giving you a buzz cut. (Not to say her stuff is surreal.) She takes personification to the extreme; for example she personifies "The Dunk" and gives him/her a rich, full life. Soon, you expect The Dunk to get married, buy a house, and produce little baby Durants. You wonder if she smokes crack or nutmeg, something healthy I'm sure, to escape the rational, lineal mind. And like a Kandinsky painting, somehow it resolves into wholesome goodness. Nobody writes like her. With time, I wonder if she'll mellow into a Joseph Ceravolo. Agree/Disagree? Write me at [email protected]. Love notes only, please.

I enjoyed this collection of poems - more so, even, than "Balloon Pop Outlaw Black": the more focused writing-style in this collection appealed to me. Interspersed with Lockwood's wonderful abstract imagery, I enjoyed the contrast between the playful and the dark on the subject of bodies and borders. Though some reviews complain of the sexually-exlipicit and raunchiness in the poems: I love it, and I think Lockwood really handles the content well. Particular standouts: "List of Cross-Dressing Soldiers," "Rape Joke," "The Father and Mother of American Tit-Pics," "The Hypno-Domme Speaks, and Speaks and Speaks," "Revealing Nature Photographs," "The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple," "Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It," "Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth," "The Whole World Gets Together and Gangbangs a Deer," and "He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center."

Poetry-wise, I am lost. Sometimes I still try to read it, but usually give up after the first few lines. I'm not the only one, I'm sure.Once upon a time in Ohio -- this is true -- I sat on the floor in a student-jammed room just a few arms' lengths from Allen Ginsberg. And nothing he said connected with me. Nothing. My major take-away was that Mr. Ginsburg, before he sat down, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his jeans, and unzipped his fly. Was he symbolically getting naked in front of the crowd or were his jeans too tight? I don't know! But I'm sitting in the midst of all this High Literary Seriousness not getting it, feeling irrelevant, looking at Ginsberg's belt buckle flopped over and hanging in space. That pretty well summarizes my experience with poetry.Patricia Lockwood, however, is the exception. I never read the NY Times anymore, but I did on that Sunday when Lichtenstein's piece on her appeared. She seemed to be a very intriguing person. Her whole family, her dad the priest, the sight-impaired husband who champions her, her brother the Marine, the mom who sticks up for her -- intriguing people, and a real family from what I could discern.So I bought her book, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals. And guess what: there is still a lot I don't understand. But I am here to tell you that the woman truly has it. Don't know exactly what 'it' is, don't know what to call it, but she's got it big time.Her writing shape-shifts. The inanimate comes alive and speaks. Land becomes personified and sexual. I often had to wonder, who or what is saying this? A lot of images and phrases re-appear from poem to poem. "Between two legs." Hawks. Fire and burning. An igniting match becomes the eye seeing the flame or vice versa. Geography (!) is a recurring theme. Gender crosses back and forth. Roundness and round objects -- her mouth, the earth, a round lens, the moon, ball dunking -- keep showing up. Innocence ruined, trust betrayed. Vitality. It's all connected.Rape Joke, probably her best known poem, has hard narrative power. Nothing funny about it, but plenty of irony. Rape Joke is lava that has skinned over and turned cool on the outside but is still molten inside.In the one before it, Why Haven't You Written, the last lines hit me with a silent thud, because I know I've been there. Assuming I got it right. Not sure if I got any of this right.Anyway, this is getting too long, but I just want to say her work is worth it. The reviewer here who said that her work is "butterflies flying" compared to butterflies pinned? That's a good way of putting it.What I would really like to read are the one or more novels she wrote that never got published, the ones she left in the woods, bear-like. Wish she would dig those up, go indie, just as is, like now. Go the New York route, it'll take forever (and they way they've handled inventory of her books … don't get me started). Right now, she's got 30k Twitter followers, according to the Times piece. Wow. For a poet to do that -- a poet living in Kansas! -- is wildly impressive.

Everything is so funny and clever that you're really jealous that you didn't write it yourself until the full emotional weight of everything hits you and then you're just thankful that Lockwood is steering this ship because she's a master at it

This was mind blowing.Author does an amazing job of luring the reader in and holding them hostage hanging onto every line.

What a strange and gorgeous book of poems. Nothing run-of-the-mill about it, and so carefully crafted.

Unique and inspirational. I appreciate the creativity!

nice book...order was delayed but seller very good about it & promised repalcemnte ..but then it turnrd up!

An interesting book, well written, interesting cover. Would read again.

Interesting a bit of a complicated read