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Editing the Erotica Issue: A Poem and Interview with Susan Holbrook
Susan Holbrook has a lot of fun writing poetry. Those who caught her earlier collection (1999’s misled) may have detected that fun before most, but her follow-up, Joy is So Exhausting, out last fall on Coach House Press, brings with it irrefutable proof. Holbrook draws from all corners of the language (marketing copy, technical writing, newspaper reports) to create an anarchic poetry of the remixable world. By anarchic, I mean that the sum experience of reading the book is often bafflement and dizziness, even though many individual poems are memorable for the surgical specificity of their creator’s choices. Joy is So Exhausting amounts to one big, eighty-five-page–long anticipatory grin on the part of its author. She seems to be saying throughout “I can’t wait, you’re going to love this.” And you will. You probably will.