IT'S ABOUT YOU
THE ROMANCE OF HAPPY WORKERS
COFFEE HOUSE, 2008
REVIEWS:
James Wagner, Esther Press :
"The words themselves convulse, break apart, sidestep, loosen, run away
feverishly in many poems, but mostly they want to be counted, like the
humor wants to be counted, like the adventure does, like the silos do,
like the nods to Marx do, like the palpable Desire does. Boyer’s poetry
challenges us to not sit still, to not allow for the familiar to lose
its mystery, and to be in the world, which includes her poetry . . "
Doug Korb, Growler Poetry Review :
"Anne Boyer is a boxer. In one corner there’s Anne Boyer, and in the other, there’s a pastoral. The bell rings. Anne Boyer comes out swinging and “John Deere’s” the pasture; Siberia is “babushkaed.” In another fight, it’s Anne Boyer vs. the Ode – no contest – Anne Boyer “doodle[s] / a font of hate as long as the alphabet.” No poem in The Romance of Happy Workers goes by without the ringing of a bell to sound the end of another grisly round. Anne Boyer is a fighting poet. Her poems not only wrestle form but also continually challenge the ideologies we (as readers) have so long taken as “the standard.” For those of us who feel Ashbery and Ammons are the end of the Romantic line, it may come as a pleasant surprise to know that Anne Boyer is vivaciously picking up that dim torch and dipping it in kerosene."
Nate Logan, Galatea Resurrects :
"The Romance of Happy Workers is something that no lover of poetry can put down once they’ve had a taste of it."
Daniela Olszewaska, Black Warrior Review:
"The Romance of Happy Workers leaves readers
hoping that Boyer will continue with her efforts to lighten up the
Canon—we want to see more room made for Boyer’s freshly, strangely,
unabashed nuggets of language."
Franklin Bruno, Nervous Unto Thirst:
A very carefully wrought book, even in apparently casual moments, that
I’m not going to pretend to be able to do justice to here. Just wanted
to this register that this poet needs flarfiness like a squid needs a
bodystocking. The title sequence, with its boho-lover figure named
“Woody,” is perfect.
Chris Bennet, SPD Staff Picks:
"This is a book of poems that is set on a stage of contexts. Sometimes
the reader lingers through amalgamations of Woody Guthrie and the
Soviet Union and sometimes the poems saunter cowboy-like through the
Midwest and the author herself. What I find most interesting in this
book is the way that the symbols for things we "know", literature,
place, and history guide us through a language that works to transcend
any and all location. The verse constantly shifts vernacular to pull
disparate thoughts together, often with a deeply seductive and
sometimes jarring tone. The poems present a "romance" of intersecting
planes and they do so with a language that is witty, pleasurable and
thoroughly enjoyable."
Joshua Corey, Xantippe:
"If you have ever
wondered what might happen if a genuinely Romantic sensibility were to
pass through the populous city of flarfists, this book is for you."
Joshua Clover, Third Factory:
“A very elegant book.”
CAConrad:
“Of all the poetry I love, the rarest are those books making me a compulsory vacuum. Anne Boyer stays put once read, and later breaks the surface of my days where I find the nerve to lean on poetry to live. ‘Darkling, who listens?’ she asks, but if trends in nose-to-tail dining are any indication, this is the whole thing coming through the new door. Some of the latest enduring insights, sexy in the city or leaning on the silo, a madness of pleasure awaits when dancing on the hot coals with Anne Boyer!”
Jennifer Moxley:
“Playful, literary, angry, sexy, Anne Boyer’s poems are filled with metamorphoses and composite creatures. Poets become birds, nouns become verbs, language is foliate and feathered. There is a recalcitrant subjectivity at the heart of this book, which grabs the old poets by the throat and then gives them a great big kiss.”
Diane Wakoski:
“In this work, you can find the intersection between Post-Newtonian physics and Hermes Trismegistus.”