Easy Math

by Lauren Shapiro, Marie Howe (Introduction)

Overview

Selected by Marie Howe for the 2011 Kathryn A. Morton Prize, Easy Math is anxious and exuberant both. Lauren Shapiro’s poems are Aesop stood on end, wry fables that defy our instinct to find a moral to the story. Instead, she offers us a gimlet eye to the disappointments of the world, tall tale-telling by turns rickety, defiant, and brave. “There are an infinite number of ways to torture the soul with hopefulness” Shapiro says, so we settle for ways to survive—crooked grins, twisted logic, and equations of jello shots, amusement parks, and post-it notes that never add up. “Everyone has something to say / about love and impermanence and waste.” She says it better than most.

"Shapiro specializes in snappy, poignant retorts to the problems of pop culture. Joan Rivers, Lindsay Lohan, and even the wily Jersey Shore crew inhabit her crackling new volume of poems, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.... Shapiro guides readers into uncomfortable but evocative settings, from a surreal ESL classroom and plague-ridden Marseilles to a hotel workout room. Imagination does not just take flight here; it rides the airport shuttle bus and connects travelers from different continents."
—Booklist

"Lauren Shapiro can downshift from the sublime to the profane and back again in less than five seconds. Energy and joy create these metaphors, and if they are in discourse with postmodern malaise, they almost win the argument."
—Marie Howe

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936747481
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	02/19/2013
Series:	Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry Series
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Lauren Shapiro received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is a former associate acquiring editor at the Yale University Press and has translated poetry from Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, and Arabic into English. Her poems have been published in such journals as Pool, Passages North, 32 Poems, Forklift, Ohio, Drunken Boat, notnostrums, and Thermos. She is a curator of the Monsters of Poetry Reading Series and an assistant editor at Rescue Press. She lives and teaches in Madison, Wisconsin.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Foreword Marie Howe ix

Easy Math

The Conversation 3

Botanical Garden 4

ESL Students 5

Bent Syllogism 6

What to Do 8

Canis Soupus 9

A Day in the Life 10

Rule Book 11

Chorus 12

They Promised Me a Thousand Years of Peace 13

I'll Never Understand It 14

The One Hundreds 15

§

History Lesson 19

The Life of Birds 20

Learning Curve 21

Hotel 23

Is There a Moral to the Story? 24

It Makes Philosophical Sense 25

A to Z 26

The Barbecue 27

Persona Poem 28

Please Support the Wisconsin Guinea Pig Rescue League 29

The Encounter 30

The Witness 31

§

Going to Hawaii 35

According to the Magazines, Lindsay Lohan is Very Lonely These Days 36

Endless Beginning 38

If You Are Lost, Don't Move 39

Photo Op 40

The Last Time I'll Ever Do That 41

Dominoes 42

A Strange Thing Happened on March 8th 43

The Machine 44

The Argument 45

First Man Gets the Oyster, Second Man Gets the Shell 46

Humanization Squared 48

§

The Confrontation 51

I've Always Wanted to Say This 52

Hallmark Aisle 53

Nothing Is More Beautiful When You Try to Make It That Way, Joan Rivers 55

After a Long Day 57

Retrospect 58

The Great Wide Open 60

The Ascent 61

How I Wrote a Belated Love Letter 62

A Tediously Slow Realization 63

The First Law of Thermodynamics 64

So Much Beauty from Despair 65

The Author 67

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Lauren Shapiro writes a smart, funny, richly inhabited poetry of the here and now. May it soon be everywhere and always.”
—James Tate

"Full of vim and vinegar, these poems push our faces into their marvelous bouquets. Constantly refreshed with alarming strangeness, Easy Math veers between irked humor and world-weary awe. Remember when we all got out of school for the fire alarm? This is even better."
—Dean Young

"Lauren Shapiro can downshift from the sublime to the profane and back again in less than five seconds. Energy and joy create these metaphors, and if they are in discourse with postmodern malaise, they almost win the argument."
—Marie Howe

“This fearless poet isn’t afraid to name something beautiful. And she's not shy about how we humans have thoughts, opinions and feelings; she brings an astonishingly acute precision to bear on so many of our less than perfect ways. She registers our misapprehensions and turns our imaginations up several registers. I love reading this book, and getting to know this poet.”
—Dara Wier

Editorial Reviews

“Lauren Shapiro writes a smart, funny, richly inhabited poetry of the here and now. May it soon be everywhere and always.”
—James Tate

"Full of vim and vinegar, these poems push our faces into their marvelous bouquets. Constantly refreshed with alarming strangeness, Easy Math veers between irked humor and world-weary awe. Remember when we all got out of school for the fire alarm? This is even better."
—Dean Young

"Lauren Shapiro can downshift from the sublime to the profane and back again in less than five seconds. Energy and joy create these metaphors, and if they are in discourse with postmodern malaise, they almost win the argument."
—Marie Howe

“This fearless poet isn’t afraid to name something beautiful. And she's not shy about how we humans have thoughts, opinions and feelings; she brings an astonishingly acute precision to bear on so many of our less than perfect ways. She registers our misapprehensions and turns our imaginations up several registers. I love reading this book, and getting to know this poet.”
—Dara Wier

From the Publisher