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
