poetry on Vice

Shapes That Make You Dizzy

Coconut Books is the print arm of the longest-running online poetry publisher I can think of. In the past several months they’ve released a slew of wicked new books. Here are my thoughts on three of them, along with an excerpt from each. Full story

Kill the Engine

My Friend Is a Poet and I Didn't Even Know It

My buddy Dan Boehl handed me a novel for young adults that he'd written titled 'Naomi and the Horse Flavored T-Shirt.' I checked out his website and realized that he has three more books of poetry in print, is writing a new novel titled 'Fire Twins,' and co-owns an independent po… Full story

Rand Paul Is Wooing Conservatives on Immigration Reform

The Republican Party have reached a tipping point and appear to have started tepidly embracing immigration reform. The man who has played a big role in tipping the scale is Senator Rand Paul, the libertarian golden boy. Full story

A Black Flag Kid Wrote a Book of Poems

By now you've probably heard about the Black Flag reunion that everyone is creaming themselves over. What you might not have heard, however, is that Chuck Dukowski's stepdaughter, Mira Gonzalez, is publishing her first book of poetry, and it's the bee's knees. Full story

The Jim Jones of Poetry

Rauan Klassnik seems like someone you’d find lingering out behind a porno bookstore in a jacket and hat, creeping around the dumpsters. His blog is full of obsessive posts about Nicholas Cage and guns and National Poetry Month. I’ve probably read his first book, Holy Land, at lea… Full story

Displaced Verse

A Controversial Syrian Poet Finds Asylum in Mexico City

In Syria, controversial poet Mohamad Alaaedin Abdul Moulawas earned a reputation as a sort of Arabic Henry Miller. Mohamad now lives in Mexico. He fled Syria just before the Free Syrian Army and Assad’s forces decided to turn his country into a pile of rubble. Full story

Just Because You’re Bored Doesn’t Mean You Have to Be a Surrealist

Surrealism is pretty stupid. It’s always just about women with clocks for faces or animals that can use cell phones. It wants you to believe it deserves more attention for pretending everything about the world isn’t just a mess governed by math. Jason Bredle is a writer who has d… Full story

The Family Man Responds

You really want to take my children into the street? Go ahead, my wife needs some peace and I work nights all this week. Good luck with that, though. I seriously think you have no fucking idea what you're getting yourself into. First off my daughter is two months old. Do you know… Full story

Dorothea Lasky’s Wild-Ass Shout-Brain

The first time I saw Dorothea Lasky she was standing in the middle of a crowded living room in Brooklyn wearing a dress and shouting into a loudspeaker. Her words go kindly for the throat. Whether she's writing about blood or going to hell or friends or fucking, there is a simult… Full story

Emily Dickinson Was So Horny and Ready to Die

Paul Legault's new book, 'The Emily Dickinson Reader,' offers greatly condensed and often aphorism-like statements, termed here 'English-to-English' translations, each based on the 1,789 poems Dickinson produced in her lifetime. One by one he entirely reconstitutes, or at least r… Full story