Alien vs. Predator

The Penguin Poets

by Michael Robbins

The debut collection of a poet whose savage, hilarious work has already received extraordinary notice.

Since his poems first began to appear in the pages of The New Yorker and Poetry, there has been a lot of excited talk about the fresh and inventive work of Michael Robbins. Equal parts hip- hop, John Berryman, and capitalism seeking death and not finding it, Robbins's poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and completely unlike anything else being written today. As allusive as the Cantos, as aggressive as a circular saw, this debut collection will offend none but the virtuous, and is certain to receive an enormous amount of attention.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Collections, Unfinished

71 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2012

About the author

Author of the poetry collections Alien vs. Predator (Penguin, 2012) and The Second Sex (Penguin, 2014). Winner of The Believer's Reader Survey for Best Book of Poetry, 2012. Recipient of Poetry Magazine's Editors Prize for Reviewing, 2013. A critical book, Equipment for Living, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.

Reviews

[Thomas Maluck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review is devoted to Michael Robbins,
and the acclaim in which he's baskin'.
Between pop culture and canon his head is bobbin'
but greater context is what I'm askin'.

"He will make your O'Hara stand on end!
He merges Ashberia with modern America!
Brings back Classic Koch and whips the rest:
On Atlantic, on Harper's, you're not so bazaar,
Robbins melts Frost and gives his asshole a scar!"

Excuse me from the land of bourgeois flaps,
of Collins and Larkin and university-press chaps.
I hear the music and meter and confidence, too,
but what makes this schizophrenia good?

"The meaning is song, the holiest bong,
do your homework and read up
on some Rilke, you jerk.
These patties aren't frozen
for your mass consumption,
you presumptive fat ass."

Fair enough. But poetry is my bath,
remodeled into your hot tub,
where the spark of a few good puns
flash-fries frogs fearing a flash
from the Spicer Girls tattoo on your dick.

You can't name-drop the truth,
but Robbins throws a good party
if you know where to look.
I'm done being bitter and keep the glitter
from this one-night stand of a book.
I woke up in Vegas, all of this happened,
two stars from a fool of a Took!

[Decoding Disclaimer: I first read Robbins's book a few months ago and dismissed it, partly out of frustration, and awarded it one star. I recently revisited the book after reading up on several poets from the 'New York school' and gained a greater appreciation of Robbins's verse. He plays with all kinds of rhyme schemes and merges different cultural worlds with such familiarity that anyone without a guide can easily feel overwhelmed or, worse, insulted, but his work hits best when performed out loud with sharp inflections. I think that anyone who tosses Robbins out for experimenting with the sounds, music, and formats of language itself is betraying poetry. Having said that, I don't necessarily like many of Robbins's poems. He can be fun, though, and is certainly worth a look, if only to expand one's boundaries.]

[Bojan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm only giving this collection of shit one star in order to remind myself that it exists and is being read.

[Renae · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am a huge poetry fan. I love edgy poetry, strange poetry, both the deep and inane.

I do not enjoy BAD poetry.

I can only assume Robbins himself penned the blurb about his poetry collection.
"Robbins's poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and completely unlike anything else being written today."
Strange, yes. Wonderful, no. These are poems that make absolutely no sense and make no statements about anything except for shock value. Borrowing phrases from pop culture--off-color ones at that--and stringing them together at random is not a method likely to produce writing that carries any meaning.

This was one of the most painful reading experiences I've endured. Ever. I got it for free from NetGalley, and I'm still offended at the waste of my time. I can only imagine how irritated I'd be if I'd actually spent money on this.

Fans of real poetry are advised to look elsewhere.

[Joel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't hate a writer who can come up with lines like: "Your tribe's Doritos are infested with a stegosaur. / That Forever 21 used to be a Virgin Megastore."

However, the signal-to-noise ratio here is alarmingly low. For every bit of inspired will-it-blend goofiness, there are glib lines like "Let's put the Christ back in Xbox" and "Slash is both sad and happy for Axl" (groan).

You know what this reminds me of? Lame nerdcore rap. Give me Wu-Tang, give me Nas, Aesop Rock, etc.

[ben adam · Rating 1 out of 5]

For poetry, this is postmodernism's end point. This book is to poetry what Transformers is to movies or Family Guy is to television comedies: a deftly covert exploration in imperialistic appropriation and capitalist product placement complemented by crass shock-value statements made out of appropriate context pieced together into a resounding mantra of nothing is sacred therefore all forms of oppression are wantonly mentionable without any recourse or care. The result is an existentialist meaninglessness that proclaims neutrality while simultaneously being hailed as edgy and daring. For example, concerning the line "I know what it's like / to be the only Negro in a thong" (61), one must question this white male and his appropriation of both an outdated racial phrase and the feminine clothing article. Furthermore, since this usage is not couched in a poem aiming toward a greater meaning (at least not explicitly so), it appears as though the author believed this was acceptable for him to identify with the doubly oppressed black womyn of the world, but for what? What purpose did he use this. It is left unexplained and therefore the offence of it remains fully intact without any redemption.

This book comes off as a strung-together grouping of phrases not dissimilar to South Park's critique of the writing staff of the show Family Guy in which (spoiler alert) Family Guy's writers are exposed as Manatees who combine nouns, adjectives, and pop culture references to create interchangeable jokes that become an episode. This book is exactly like that, and it is terrible. Its stench wreaks of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and the Minority World apathy for those who suffer in order to make this neo-liberal project oiled and moving full speed ahead.

[Riegs · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are a lot of positive reviews for this, but I think I'll be the lone dissent. Swearing and mentioning dicks in poems isn't that new or clever, and neither are pop culture references. I think Michael Robbins was going for absurdity, but instead comes off as that jerk who was trying to prank their high school creative writing teacher.

[mehg-hen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impish, joyous, foul-mouthed weirdo who made me laugh so hard in a review I actually spent $18 on a book of poetry. The title made me laugh and the quote made me laugh. It's this one--

"I look into my heart and creep.
My heart is lovely, dark and deep

I kiss your trash. My boobs are fake.
I have promises to break."

I think a regular book lights up a path in your brain, like all the synapses make sense "okay, your grandma synapse lit up near your cookie synapse and your vacation synapse and old lady synapse. Sure." If they charted the brain of someone reading this thing, I think it would be like a seizure, heavy on the penis and asshole sections. Everything seems like a straight faced absurd weirdo who WILL NOT make you comfortable except by being some kind of a tripped out freak who won't hurt you but won't edit himself, like an old man who takes out his eye and plays a banjo with a stump, wearing hooker boots with fans on his junk. I'm telling you. This guy makes your brain think very strange things, and I've been watching David Lynch for the first time, and somehow I think they'd be friends. Mind-bendy, surreal, delightful, this is id candy that makes no sense while also making total cockeyed bizarre, visual sense.

I like:
"You're coated with salmonella. Or am I
confusing you with the kitchen sponge again?"

And I laughed very hard at:
"The morning slathers its whatever
across the thing."

Now, here are a bunch of quotes out of context, so it doesn't do it justice, but maybe read one and look out the window for a second before you read the next one. Or read the book.

Quotes I loved:

"Tried to use the spoon but
the spoon shorted out."

And:
"the girls in H&M,
those switchblades made of human skin."

And:
"The seasons rearrange themselves.
Winter, winter, Google, fall."

And:
"And now the Ghanaian poets weep in Guitar Center."

And:
"This episode of CSI: Miami
always makes me cry. I throw the Eagles'
Greatest Hits out the window, darkly."

And:
"I got a tattoo of God. You can't see it.
But it's everywhere."

And finally:
"I stand and watch lightening
bugs constellate an inch-high sky."

You will feel dirty and weird but very alive.

[Danielle Mebert]

Smug, pretentious, and wholly unenjoyable.

[Erin the Avid Reader ⚜BFF's with the Cheshire Cat⚜ · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Robbin's poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and unlike anything else being written today."

Riiiiiiight...

I have no idea who wrote this blurb, but something tells me they barely read through this book of "poems" and just overheard what somebody else thought of it. I have no idea what it means when it says "unlike anything else being written today" when you know stuff like this was not popular before the 2000's. Try to find literature written in the 1800's that is written like a juvenile 12 year old boy making pop culture references to the simplest things, using shock value with no purpose, and thinking he's being "cutting edge".

Indeed these poems are strange, but wonderful is not a word I couldn't fathom for the blurb. I have no idea how this got into the Penguin collection in the first place.

I read this book in a couple days. Usually if I'm reading poetry I will take days more (even weeks) to analyze what I have read. Not this time. I guess Dr.Connotative was out of the office this morning.

I'm not saying there has to be hidden meanings in all poetry, but these poems are seriously so dumbed down and straightforward I have no idea why these are poems in the first place. Heck, most of his poems don't even follow a paragraph pattern. Example: Instead of writing a poem that could go aabbccddee...etc. some of his poems just kind of feel like adding incredibly long sentences and some that are just two words long right near each other without a pattern. Poetry is like math. Most good poets try to come up with a scheme so that sentence lengths match each other from time to time or create a rhythm.

Here's a good example from the poet Robert Frost:

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way
They turn their back on the land
They look at the sea all day.

You feel and see the pattern and beat? Read it a couple times and you'll see it.

Here's what the poem would look like of Robbin had wrote it:

The people stare out onto the goddamn sea
Because why the hell not
Their back is turned where the people behind can see their asses and their sunburned backs and all that shit
Aren't my poems just the best?!?!

See what I mean?

[Ti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Short of It:

Sharp, edgy and bold.

The Rest of It:

I am not a regular reader of poetry. I read poetry in college and every now and then, I’ll come across a poem that speaks to me, but once again, just to be clear… I am not a reader of poetry. I often don’t know how to read them out loud, or on paper so what I look for, is something different from what I experience on a daily basis. I want to be disturbed (yes) a little bit and forced to think. I want to be shocked, but not put off and there is a fine line between shocking and disgusting when it comes to poetry.

When I first read Alien vs. Predator, I felt assaulted and vaguely dirty. As if I had been taken advantage of and tossed to the curb. I wasn’t sure what to think! I put it aside for a little while. That’s when I noticed that my mind kept going back to it, whether I wanted it to or not. The visceral reaction that I’d first had, morphed into a vague curiosity and of course, that led me to pick it up again. Why, you ask?

I have a soft-spot for references to pop-culture and this collection is chock full of them. Kool-Aid, Amber Alerts, Care Bears, Michael J. Fox, Soylent Green (my personal fave) and the list goes on. The poems themselves are almost written in a stream of consciousness style which makes it impossible to predict which direction he’ll take. Sometimes they are dark and once in a while, they are funny. Although, I do have to admit that most of them seem a bit angry to me. Not violent, just angry, pissed-off at the world in some way but then right when they begin to get too dark, he throws in something to surprise you, like calling himself an asshole. I chuckled over that one.

This collection may not be for everyone. It’s certainly not for the reader who is looking for poems about beautiful gardens, paths not taken and white, puffy clouds of happiness but there is something here for a reader who is looking for more. More substance, more food for thought.

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter

[Zack Clemmons · Rating 2 out of 5]

what can be said in favor: strong recovery of the rhyme, esp. the internal rhyme + some excellent brash turns of phrase ('Slash is both sad and happy for Axl/the nation's pets are high on Paxil'; 'the Christian youth group is sudsing cars./They get Raptured. They hit the bars.'; 'But enough about me/is one of my favorite sayings.'; all of the poems 'Modern Love' + 'The Dark Clicks On'). some cute allusions ('I wandered lonely as Jay-Z/after the Fat Boys called it quits'). he's good when he channels + transposes Whitman + Berryman ('Dream Song 1864' and 'Space Mountain'[best poem in the book], respectively). a few poems made me laugh. most of these would probably sound good rapped. probably the best thing I could say for this collection: it's a powerful distillation and concentrated statement of the soul twisted disjointed bound and sickened by late stage degenerate american capitalism that we all share.

what can't: it's a powerful distillation and concentrated statement of the soul twisted disjointed bound and sickened by late stage degenerate american capitalism that we all share, that just revels in its twistedness and disjointedness and sickness and seems mostly satisfied with making some ironic cynical jokes about it all. he feels the death and absence of truth, goodness, and beauty, and just doesn't care ('The truth's an illusion. The truth's a mistake.) + gobs of profanity, which is cheap & lame. + an aggressive density of non-sequitur & private allusion that's stupid & alienating. + sacrilege.

[Mark Zieg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I assume you already know that this is not what the title implies: unrelated to the sci-fi/horror film franchise, this is a book of modern poetry.

As to the poetry itself...well. You should probably Google some of his poetry before buying this book, unless you just like diving in at the deep end. I think I had in mind something like Blue Wizard Is about to Die!, which I quite liked, but this wasn't that. I don't know what this is, and while I think I mostly like it, I have absolutely no idea what it means or what to take from it.

I think I can safely say that Robbin's poetry is utterly, completely awful. Vogon-level awful. Just really, really, nonsensical and bad.

That doesn't mean that the sheer absurdity of his lines isn't without a certain charm. Whether it all adds up to anything or not, it is an interesting, continually surprising read.

I currently keep it next to my bedside copy of the Tao Te Ching, suitable for when I want to open a book in the middle and read a random koan or verse to spark or flavor my thought-process.

[Tommy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bruh, there was not a single Xenomorph or Yautja in this book

[Mark Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

If, as Ezra Pound declared, poets are the antennae of the race, then Michael Robbins' antenna is tuned to many different frequencies simultaneously. His poems are densely allusive; pop cultural references intertwine with classical, historical and poetic in-jokes, often with hilarious and always with disturbing effect. There is something of the cut-up method invented by Brion Gysin and W.S. Burroughs in these poems; unlike the Gysin/Burroughs works, the poet's rhythmic sense and ear are everywhere clearly evident. Robbins has mined the midden heap of late twentieth century U.S. culture, and has artfully arranged his found objects. 'The Dark Clicks On', for instance, begins with a riff on 'The Silence of the Lambs' (The morning slathers its whatever/across the thing. It puts the fucking/lotion in the basket. Can't smoke/in the confessional anymore.); in the next verse, a reference to Basho's 'frog haiku' emerges like a classical counter-melody suddenly popping up in a jazz improvisation (Old pond, frog jumps in, so what.). These short poems - the longest is around forty lines - are a joy to read aloud. They are a realization of the information overload that David Foster Wallace took as one of the central themes of his work. It saddens me that Wallace did not live to enjoy these strange artifacts of these strange times.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

The language in this volume is fiercely alive, a fascinating mash-up of rock n roll, media chaos, a touch of hip-hop, the kitchen sink. Robbins does a brilliant job with humor based on enjambment and the echoes of slogans from the mid-20th century on. Rhyming and off-rhyming in short poems, he keeps it moving and keeps you off-balance.

What I'm not sure of is what's at the core of his vision (or even if that's quite the right question--there's a bit of David Sheilds knocking about. At times, it feels nihilistic, everything undercutting everything, but at others, it feels like there's if not quite a center at least a direction, a wave moving out towards a world that's better than the mess we've got.

Wouldn't shock me if this is five star in the long-run, but for now I'm going to be cautious. If anyone's read it and has thoughts, I'd love to talk it over.

[Cale · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this is modern poetry, I'm proud not to 'get it.' I would think Poems would have good turns of phrases, but beyond an avalanche of pop cultural references, there's not really much substance here. Maybe it's poetry that you have to hear to feel; the rhythms didn't speak to me at all. And I just had a negative reaction from the start, so putting the time in to try to tease out meaning did not seem a worthwhile use of time or effort. To those that find Mr. Robbins 'viciously inventive' or 'brutal' I'll leave it to you; but I don't feel at all bad about not being one who 'gets it'.

[Carmen]

I killed the boar
'cause boar's the game I came here for.
I clear the jungle with the edge of my hand.
I make love to an ATM. I enrich uranium.
Dude, this aggression will not stand.

Good? Or bad?

Black people can't swim. Yes we can.
The giant Kool-Aid pitcher doesn't love
A wall. I replace mirrors with Rorschach blots.
Think some Arnold Horshack thoughts.

What do you think?

I got a tattoo of God. You can't see it
but it's everywhere.

LOL That's a good one. :)

I must investigate this book and get my hands on a copy.

[C · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst books of "poetry" I have ever read.

[Jonathan Maas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Came here for the Yautja, stayed for the hipster angst
I thought this was going to be a book on Alien vs Predator, and then I thought it was going to be a book of poetry about Alien vs. Predator.



It is neither.

What it is, is a hipster book that references such things, but is not directly tied to any Yautja or Alien or anything else.

It is cooler than cool, hipper than hip - so be warned that it might not be for you.

It is not quite that Mary Oliver level of accessibility, but it is close.

And regardless, I recommend Michael Robbins's book, even though I would have loved to see more Yautjas, more Xenomorphs, and even a few Space Marines.

But regardless - very cool!

[Ville Verkkapuro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting this. Not at all.
I was expecting a Chris Kraus type of mixture between essay, poetry and autofiction. Maybe a splash of Sung Yim. What I got was a hip hop verse on each page, with bizarre fragments of songs from bands like Nirvana.
Still, I loved it. I'm not sure I understood it, but I loved it.
I want to make songs of this poetry. I want to read this drunk, high, hungover.
What the hell. Never read anything like this before, very interesting.

[Raven Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I meet Robbins I hope I can say, "Dude. You're F'ed up" And I hope he smiles and says, "Thanks"


Everything is nonsense, yet seems to make sense when it doesn't Words strung together in a pattern of lines on a page but are alive

[Cassidy Cassidy43 · Rating 1 out of 5]

atrocious

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I began this book, I really wanted to hate it. And I did. But halfway through, either the poems became more interesting/affecting, or I softened. Regardless, I relented, read, and enjoyed.

[Mackenzie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Have you ever wanted to listen to a guy, who thinks he’s hilarious, talk about his penis, quote ‘80s songs, and make movie references?

Yeah, me neither.

[Terri R · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this poet definitely offends my sense of what goes with what, almost every poem had an amazing turn of phrase and every one caught my attention and made me think. But then he would throw in something completely disgusting and haywire! I would probably need to read a few more times to start "getting" them and even then they seem so personal to the author that I am not sure I can. He reminds me of the video store guy in Men in Black who lives with his mom. This was one of my favorite lines: "Let's chase dawn's tail across state lines/sing "Crimson and Clover" over and overy/till wonders are taken for road signs." But it was in a stanza to rhyme with ovary.

[Rob Fyfe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up at a cute little bookstore. I opened it up, read a few lines, immediately loved the premise, and decided to read the whole thing on my flight home.

This book of poetry was absolute crap. It made me disappointed in the current state of poetry. Robbins has a PhD, yet all he did was collect a bunch of quips heard in our current vernacular and try to rhyme them together. There wasn't a thread of logic to the utterances. You're just awash in sometimes-rhyming catch phrases and twitter speak. Such a disappointment.

[Steven Critelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the most brilliant debut by a U.S. poet in the last 25 years. Michael Robbins shows us how poetry lives at the center of the cultural vortex. See my essay here: http://rockcru.wordpress.com/2012/11/...

[TK421 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps this rating is too low. Then again, perhaps I am being too generous. While the wordsmithing and references (high and low) added value to this collection, the inaccessibility of some of these poems prevented me from fully realizing the brilliance of Michael Robbins.

[Nat]

While I was filling my dissertation in philosophy of language with boring-ass academic prose, my (then) downstairs neighbor was writing and publishing these poems.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A boom box bursting fireworks and punch smart stuff. The thrill of sound -- but at the expense of sense. Wah: hardly anything stuck or got under my skin or let me get this swift word dance.