So nice to get a book in the mail. So nice when that book is from Ugly Duckling Presse. So nice when that Ugly Duckling Presse book is by a friend. Even nicer when that friend is Brooklyn’s Michael Ruby, author of five full-length collections of poetry,  including the brand new American Songbook. 

American Songbook is Ruby’s poetic response to an ambitious sweep of 20th century vocal music, including blues, jazz and country standards, Hip Hop, rock and disco. Lewis Warsh writes “You can sing  along to Michael Ruby’s delirious new poems in American Songbook, your voice echoing down (to mis-qute Fred Neil) “the canyon of your mind,” until you can’t sing any more and the  poem goes off on its own.”

It’s an inviting book, which begins with the words, “Girls, beef up the rackets, and plasticize the seven dwarfs” in a poem called “Pinchbacks—Take ‘Em Away” for the great Bessie Smith.

“Come As You Are” is a poem for Kurt Cobain that begins: “Come circumnavigate this eyeball in a see of eyeballs/As you are glowing polyurethane or coconut soda.”

“I just called the chocolate relief/to say four hearts poise/I love you in the varnished spring/I just called the highboy song…” is from a poem called “I Just Called to Say I Love You” for Stevie Wonder.

Reading Ruby’s book is like browsing through someone’s iTunes playlist. Someone with a really good playlist, that is. All the poems are named for songs and performers, some familiar, some obscure. Quickly the poems take the reader into strange terrain, mangling the lyrics in ways that are complex and compelling. This is language-y stuff that tracks meaning in discombobulating ways. Clearly, he knows (and loves his music) but he also lets loose in the realm of the hallucenogenic poetic imagination.

Ruby’s other books include Memories, Dreams and Inner Voices, Compulsive Words and At an Intersection. You can learn more about them here.