Book Review : Brian Alan Ellis - Bad Poet (2020)
Brian Alan Ellis is perhaps the most twenty-first century writer there is. The unquestioned master of microfiction has boiled contemporary living to its bare essentials: movies, bad food, irony and crippling loneliness. That’s why I’ve covered him so extensively in the past and continue to cover him today. His never-ending emotional collapse is interesting and oddly relatable. In Bad Poet, Ellis continues his downward slide with increasing clarity and purpose.
Bad Poet will feel familiar to those of you who read Brian Alan Ellis’ previous collection Road Warrior Hawk. It’s a collection of poems that dialogue with their own title. The poem providing pure emotion and the title enhancing the experience by giving ironic, distanced perspective. I don’t know any purer depiction of being inside a millenial’s brain. Raw emotion and cynicism are constantly battling for your attention, not allowing you to live whatever you need to live.
Street cred < Street dread
If a stranger ever approaches you
and says, “Hey, you look familiar,”
remind them of who you really are,
which is the kid who shit their pants
in elementary school.
Easy.
The poem quoted above intends to make for of the overused expression street cred, which is thrown around today by people who aren’t from the street and who don’t have any credibility. Ellis makes a vibrant plea for transparency and self-acceptance with this poem. Sure, there’s irony to it. But the overarching idea of Street cred < Street dread is that you shouldn’t try to impress strangers. Instead, you should be using them to gain perspective and heal your trauma.
It’s brilliant in its own crass way.
There’s another great piece in Bad Poet about flipping over your mattress, a very matter-of-fact intergenerational advice that doesn’t make any sense if your sleeping problems are not physical. In this poem, Brian Alan Ellis really nails the anger of being supposed to find “happinesss” and “success” without even knowing what these things mean. We’re living in a world filled with solutions that completely ill-suited to our problems, like flipping a stupid fucking mattress.
Giving my inability to deal with anything a negative review on Yelp brb
Reminder:
My roommate’s half-eaten bowl
of Frosted Mini-Wheats
is definitely the saddest thing
I have ever found
inside a refrigerator.
Another thing I really like about Brian Alan Ellis’ writing that’s omnipresent in Bad Poet is the confrontation of pop culture. While others find it pleasant and comforting to watch wrestling or eat Domino’s, but looks at these for what they really are: temporary distractions from your problems, which give you pleasure in a physically unhealthy way. In Ellis’ case, every moment he chooses to spend with pop culture is actually enhancing his loneliness and heartbreak.
The well-cultivated, intoxicating mix of cynicism and self-awareness are really what Brian Alan Ellis’ does better than everybody else. But he does it in a format that is both relatable (not longer than a Facebook status) and accessible. If he really invested his time into it, Ellis could easily be gutter version of Rupi Kaur on Instagram. His work has a good enough balance of humanity and self-loathing to travel beyond the pages of his books.
That said, you should totally read Bad Poet. It’s short, clever and low-key emotional. The kind of book you read in one feverish afternoon (who am I kidding? One feverish hour) near the pool, while slowly getting drunk on Palm Bays you’ve just bought at 7-11. It’s poetry for internet people. For people like you and I who have grown up with that digital wall between each other. I don’t know how else to say it. Even if you’re not into reading, you should like these.
7.8/10
