Just saw the left pic as my friend Jeremy Bauer’s facebook cover photo and thought yiahhhh...
I made the koozie for Jeremy because he was one of the first to preorder on the original print run, but he never received the free koozie that was supposed to be sent to maybe the first 10 preorderers. Anyway, I’ve also included a pic of the official koozie as the right pic. In the background of the right pic you will notice a highly illuminated draft of this blog post. Jeremy’s koozie may be a bootleg, but it was also made by the author (no royalties).
Also, I just noticed that it’s Jeremy’s bday, so heavens yes to that good man!
The Drunk Sonnets reviewed by Chelsea Werner-Jatzke
I have friend who’s been talking about her hypomania lately. I don’t know what hypomania is but everything I need to know to be a good friend is in the compound of this compound word. So we have another glass of wine and compare notes on heartache until she starts to slur. This is what it’s like reading THE DRUNK SONNETS by Daniel Bailey.
First, you will be confronted by the capital letters. All of them. And they will be unexpected because Magic Helicopter Press released the second edition of the book in January, now with introduction by Sean Lovelace, poet and professor of Bailey’s from BSU. This introduction uses the kind of capitalization we’ve all come to expect of the world.
Next you will be confronted by expectations; your own when you think of a sonnet. You might speed through these poems, rollicking in Bailey’s humor, enjambment, and profanity. And then you’ll have hit upon it—these sonnets are profane. They don’t care for much beyond the fourteen lines of the form. Sonnet #30 says it best:
LOVE IS HARDER THAN NOISE MUSIC
4/4 TIME OR 3/4 TIME OR WHATEVER IT TAKES
Sometimes, as in Sonnet #6, Bailey uses slant rhyme (SANDWICH and WORTHLESS, WOMAN and INSPECTION, BUTTWAD and BIG TIME) in two Petrarchan stanzas. Sometimes, like in Sonnet #42, he’ll throw in a HOLY SHIT! for good measure, literally. Sometimes you’ll have no idea what he is talking about. As in, I SHOULD MY DEATH SENTENCE BROCCOLI (Sonnet #40). Latent childhood broccoli trauma surfacing from the depths of drink? Perhaps he threw in anapestic trimeter to hit the beat of something? In any case, the line does function as the connective tissue that moves the sonnet from the nonsense of narcissism to the nonsense of empathy (HOW DOES DEATH EVEN HAPPEN?).
We do not get what we expect, Bailey’s collection says. Instead we get hungry and heart broken, death and dizzy. And he connects these things with sleeping cats (Sonnet #8) or N64 (Sonnet #24). As when it comes to being a good friend to a hypomaniac, you don’t need to know shit about poetry to enjoy THE DRUNK SONNETS. For the time you spend in these pages just revel in American colloquialisms, high-fives, and HELL YEAHs! And love, tender and terrible.
You don’t need to know how drunk Bailey was while writing, that he wrote 12 poems a night at least three beers in and did most editing sober, but for more details such as these find interviews with the author here.
i fucking love daniel bailey, he is a master of might this is his drunk sonnet 14 from his book DRUNK SONNETS i had a pitcher of the margartias, it is 8:45 pm,&
What to do when you're bored on a random Wednesday? Invite all your creative friends over to read sonnets!
...There may have been some light drinking involved!
I think my friend and brilliant comedienne Amy Claire nailed this sonnet:
