CRACKPOT by Jeremy Sigler

When a crackpot finds poetry, he winds up in a pretty fertile place, maybe the only right place. The poems in this book -an unlikely cross of Trakl and Sondheim-are a thrilling choreography of cartoonish dreams and self-deprecating introspection. “Dear Jeremy, I think Ape Ancestry would make a better title.” -Alison Knowles

These poems are kindred with Aram Saroyan’s in their restraint, Ernst Jandl’s in their permutational acrobatics, and Robert Creeley’s in their microtonal registers of subjectivity. Sigler’s mantra might be that slapstick speaks louder than words, his poems imploding with what they imply.

These really change my definition of poetry. A little bit. If it was all sound-more or less, yet you walked away from that limitation at some point-maybe the end. The end just stands there sorta. You know what I mean by sound is rhyme. Yeah, kind of rhyme. And then there’s some sentiment. These poems are not so much sexy but full of love I think. In fact, that might be what the rhyming’s all about. The safety of love-perhaps. Whatever it is driving this it’s more than an idea and it’s not messy at all, or smug. It’s some new definition of poetry. It doesn’t rhyme with family but it’s about that long and that complete. And open, finally. I think Gertrude Stein. But not too much. You’ll see what if you read this book.

Sigler is a sculptor-of gags, of rhymes, of verbal assonance and cognitive dissonance, of a lyricism that emerges from behind blocks of words.