Patter

Douglas Kearney’s Patter is a book of poetry that turns the raw bricks of emotion into home, one that houses all the tender parts of the speaker’s self most don’t let show and, particularly, what manhood and society wants to keep covered: the deep complexity and the elasticity of masculinity as well as the impassioned love at the center of fatherhood. Patter holds the loss of a forming idea, of a person becoming, one the speaker has yet to touch or see, at its core. In a way, Patter is a quaking lesson on how powerful ideas are.As the book unfolds, this all becomes a facet of a larger critique on the structure of whiteness only by way of the speaker moving through spheres of blackness as the poems of Patter at once utilizes and abandons the simple, traditional landscapes of verse and transforms them into complex cathedral-like structures symbolizing the mind, emotions & feelings—which becomes a poignant way to document speech & thought to render the pain and complexities of politics, race, sexism, fatherhood, miscarriage, & relationships, right onto the page. These poems are what it feels like to think to one’s self, especially when meditating on devastating terrain. Sometimes we must, “distract the crowd with patter,” so we don’t hurt so much or, in contrast, challenge and critique parts of the chaotic and unjust landscapes we’re a part of, “if evil here, who see it? / some see what sum get the get / of the once got. / if evil here, who speak it?”Patter becomes a collection being torn asunder and coalescing until a self is brought forth, “I sit to work on me to work on. life is its own hunger for itself” (77). Anthony Fife says, “Patter is an attempt to reconcile the internal and the external; an effort to find answers when language and rationality fail, and our own desires become unintelligible, even harmful.  And how, despite the internal tangles, we become what we need to become, and rise despite ourselves, to the occasion,” which I couldn’t have said better.

Douglas Kearney,'s PATTER explores a couple seeking to get pregnant who are thwarted by miscarriage. In our culture, we never get to hear about miscarriage from the perspective of the father, but Kearney asserts his right to that territory. It's a world rife with grief and disappointment, as well as concern about being a bad dad—a segment of the book celebrates famously bad dads. In many of the poems he wields a searing humor that layers all the complicated emotions of his situation, including the recounting of being part of a reality show about women who have miscarried. The book does all this while performing verbal pyrotechnics that demonstrate Kearney's tremendous gifts with language.

BEAUTIFUL book. Metaphors, words, imagery, and themes are all very powerful and beautifully presented. The author combines intriguing words with word arrangements which tell their own story, just in the physical placement of words. This book is unlike your traditional poetry book, and I would highly recommend it.

But I'm going to say this: The fascile and flatulent ravings of an overcultured biscuit are contained within this epexegetic waste of pressed pulp. The author's candor is effulgence for the reader's mind, which soon reels at the realization of being tasked with deciphering a spattering of puerile concepts enpoemed throughout.If one survives the initial affront to the consciousness, there is a good deal of *something* to be found.Deeply we peer into the mind of a nigh-diapered man who has undoubtedly crawled for decades toward the absolute apotheosis of anti-intellectualism (modern academia); Not only to grab it and to cuddle up tightly to it, but even to suckle on it like a binky. His commentary is waylaid by tangential thoughts and associations misfiring mid-sentence like a foaming schizophrenic accosting you on a walk home from Cliff Huxtable's bartending school. The rythymic sleight-of-hand and nonsencical run-ons interestingly expose a sloven, polyester, petulent, hyperbolic, and vulgar diatribe (and rationalization?) of his indeterminate underlying perspective masquerading as commentary on "The Nuclear Family."I genuinely think this author wants to beat his father within an inch of his life wearing a cape and then kiss his mother passionately as his father looks on while slipping in-and-out of consciousness. It's even highlighted in the actual summary above. It is very possible that something happened during the phallic stage of psychosexual development to light a slow burning fuse; This very book: The series of loud crackles and pops that bleed into incoherent noise as a result, perhaps. He could be trolling us. But after a quick search on Youtube, I decided he is absolutely not.This is an honest review of what I came away with after having my mind hobbled by reading Patter. I believe the author and his mother gave multiple 5 star reviews to this in an attempt to drive sales. My copy was thankfully borrowed. You should buy and read this book because it's the perfect taste of the literary dish that's served after simmering for many years in a bubbling pot of moral negligence, white guilt, and a crumbling western civilization.3 out of 5 stars.

Really looking forward to this title coming to Kindle format as soon as possible. An important perspective on a sensitive subject.