{"id":56363,"date":"2023-03-31T10:56:58","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T14:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=56363"},"modified":"2023-03-31T12:06:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T16:06:52","slug":"poetry-comes-first-large-menu-from-bite-sized-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2023\/03\/poetry-comes-first-large-menu-from-bite-sized-books.html","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Comes First<\/em><\/font>
Large Menu from Bite-Sized Books<\/strong><\/font>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>
Bite-Sized Books<\/strong> (2023)<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first volume in a projected series called The Return to Reason<\/strong> has been released by the British publisher Bite-Sized Books Lt<\/a>d. The stated aim of the volume, titled The Poem is Part of the Eye<\/a><\/em>, is “to draw new readers towards poetry they may not be familiar with or have not previously engaged with at all.\u201d There are nearly 150 poems by 30 poets featured in the volume. Here are two: “The Drunk in Charge,” a poem in prose by Jay Jeff Jones<\/a>, and “Short Fuckland Manifesto!” a poem ripped straight from the news by Saira Viola<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE DRUNK IN CHARGE<\/strong>\n\nThe drunk in charge is not in charge of anything but does whatever\nno one else has done, then does again everything he had done before\nbut forgotten. He lets in the dog that isn't there, locks the door that\nhe just unlocked, sweeps up the rest of the broken glass, washes the\nwound again, wonders what the shouting was about, pours a last\ndrink for everyone, pours really the last drink for himself. Dawn is\nalready making the curtains look dirty and he says listen, no, listen,\nit's not that we love to drink, it's that we simply hate to stop. Then,\nwhen he is sure there is no one listening, when his eyes don't work\nthat well and someone is sighing again, tells himself, if there's no\narguing with life, you have to take it out on anyone you can.\n\nSHORT FUCKLAND MANIFESTO! <\/strong>\n\nOur world is bastardized by billion dollar killers.\nPhone-tapping regimes, and audio response\nLife-insurance policies, Panamanian tax breakers\nAnd coco cola pimp daddies; Amazon algorithms\nAnd a string of Pakistani virgin smiles slaughtered\nBy cockless drones . . . Click click kill!\n\nCrooked old judges masturbate in public\nOffering a library of sodomised legality.\nWe exist in a plastic sunshine pop parade of botoxed,\nBig-assed big-mouthed nothing.\nWe are a living museum of segregation;\n\nA dis-information network.\nA graveyard of debtors' skulls.\nA church of Costco disciples.\nA hearse of crying mothers.\nA colostomy bag of wounded soldiers.\nA codification of injustice.\n\nA confederacy of bankers.\nAn abattoir of children's dreams:\nAlways a war zone;\nA wheezy wet-mouthed\nTabloid tragedy.\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first volume in a projected series called The Return to Reason has been released by the British publisher Bite-Sized Books Ltd. The stated aim of the volume, titled ‘The Poem is Part of the Eye,’ is \u201cto draw new readers towards poetry they may not be familiar with or have not previously engaged with at all.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":56368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-56363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/THE-POEM-IS-PART-OF-THE-EYE-560.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-eF5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56363"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56482,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56363\/revisions\/56482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}