Something I Expected to Be Different

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Summary: The Beauty of Beckman
Review: I have never been so moved by poetry before. Both of Joshua Beckman's books are amazing -- especially to a non-poetry reader. He's changed my tune. Eagerly awaiting his next book...

Rating:
Summary: American Original
Review: Joshua Beckman has bounded into American Poetry, changing the way we think about it. "Something I Expected to be Different" is a vast, beautiful river of a book, wherein everything is swept up and polished like stones and even pain is offered up to us smooth as beach glass. This book is everything great from Whitman and Ginsburg and yeah, even Gerald Stern. It's an incredibly generous and saint-like energy behind the poems that sweeps everything into its arms and tries furiously to love it all. These poems are unique in contemporary American Poetry.

Rating:
Summary: Money Money Money
Review: Written as he was driving cross country to deliver a large microwave filled with ketamine, JB's second book of pomes takes on the voice of Paul Simon to explain the travails of city life and the travails of tulips. It is wonderful and not nearly as pornographic as everybody says. "Who is the tall white man with an afro behind me on this bike?" a classic line among many. He's going to Graceland. Personally though I had issues with Mr. Crazy. He don't mean to brag, he don't mean to boast, but Josh Beckman loves hot butter on his breakfast toast. ... Truly, a wonderous book of epic lyrics in cinematic scope all, rumor has it, footnotes to a dictionary of music. Lovely. One life, you got to do what you should.