Inevitable: Morgan Parker and Mark Bibbins are both political poets whose engagement with popular culture is fully satirical and irreverent.
Evitable: Morgan Parker anchors the reader/audience in a sense of popular culture and everyday life but more than everyday life, everyday rhythms. Her provocatively titled book, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, that most of the read material has appeared in, presents her triumph in 63 matte white pages with a simple narrow font published by Switchback Books of Chicago, Illinois this year. Her upcoming book from Coconut Books, There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce, that she read a limited amount of work from, will also surely be a testament to her ability to blend politics and pop culture into a passionate statement about life. Who’s life? Mostly It seems to be her own in the tradition of Frank O’Hara who she acknowledges alongside Jay-Z in the back of Other People’s Comfort.
Inevitable: While Mark Bibbins is talking about academia and Morgan Parker is talking about “family bullshit” they both maintain a slight deadpan/declarative style of reading that shifts into small humor occasionally.
Evitable: Morgan Parker declares, “I slithered but did not crawl,” in her automythobiographical poem “In Search of Morgan, Season 3, Episode 24” (Other People’s Comfort, p.30, 2015). She explains that her mother maintained that she was named after a character on The Cosby Show. She never took her mother seriously. However finally convinced, she began to search episode by episode on Netflix feeling that, “If she does not exist, I do not exist.” “In Search of Morgan” is a poem that exhibits Parker’s grounding use of popular culture while never shying away from her politics. “No more kissing sounds from Men on Street/ No More White Girl Problems” (p.31, 2015).
Favorite Quotations:
“...As a woman I ignore what is half-assed/ and watered down…” ~ Morgan Parker
“...Every eye a lighthouse/ looking down on flotsam…” ~ Mark Bibbins
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