95 Books In 2006, George W. Bush read 95 books. We will do better.

Helen Hajnoczky has written a book of poetry that transforms advertisements into a poetic biography. The book succeeds most in the long poems, in my opinion, because it is in those longer poems where the craft of teasing a narrative out of the pre-existing texts tends to go in less obvious directions than the shorter poems, where both the ad and the story are clear. I was pleased that there were so few moments that I could associate with a specific advert that I was familiar with; while there are slogans in the book, they don’t cement the poetry the same way they might an ad campaign. Poets and Killers cycles between humour and tenderness, hard and soft sells. It acknowledges and critiques the way advertisements are constructed: the impersonality of desire.

Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising is a great book to introduce a hesitant poetry reader to contemporary poetics. In fact, I’m giving out a few holiday copies to people who have expressed a desire to read poetry, but are reluctant to engage with the genre because they’re afraid of not getting it. The concluding essay makes the book particularly lend itself to this purpose, clarifying the concept and the process in direct prose, while considering the ethics of the poetics, of publication, and of selling a book that questions commodity culture.

~Claire