Easy Math

by Lauren Shapiro, Marie Howe (Introduction)

Selected by Marie Howe for the 2011 Kathryn A. Morton Prize, Easy Math is anxious and exuberant both. Lauren Shapiro’s poems are Aesop stood on end, wry fables that defy our instinct to find a moral to the story. Instead, she offers us a gimlet eye to the disappointments of the world, tall tale-telling by turns rickety, defiant, and brave. “There are an infinite number of ways to torture the soul with hopefulness” Shapiro says, so we settle for ways to survive—crooked grins, twisted logic, and equations of jello shots, amusement parks, and post-it notes that never add up. “Everyone has something to say / about love and impermanence and waste.” She says it better than most.

"Shapiro specializes in snappy, poignant retorts to the problems of pop culture. Joan Rivers, Lindsay Lohan, and even the wily Jersey Shore crew inhabit her crackling new volume of poems, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.... Shapiro guides readers into uncomfortable but evocative settings, from a surreal ESL classroom and plague-ridden Marseilles to a hotel workout room. Imagination does not just take flight here; it rides the airport shuttle bus and connects travelers from different continents."
-- Booklist

"Lauren Shapiro can downshift from the sublime to the profane and back again in less than five seconds. Energy and joy create these metaphors, and if they are in discourse with postmodern malaise, they almost win the argument."
—Marie Howe

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2013

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection starts out very strong with a distinct and interesting voice, but it never changes or progresses much from those first poems. I think I would enjoy each of these poems in a vacuum, but as a collection it feels repetitive and a bit dull. It's all the same poem.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some James Tate flavors, with Marianne Boruch and Mark Bibbins mixed in. Some of my favorite moments:

I write about the polarization of grasses and the esteemed poet writes how impressed we are with the polarization of grasses.

Later, people would speak of the times as the times and bow their heads like cattle.

I’ve always wanted to be the softest piece in the chess set.

I am committed to disrupting complacency.

The girl who wants to be married with kids by 30 misses the point of both, no?

When I was little I wanted to be a truck driver and now, essentially, I’m a truck driver.

Shapiro, Lauren. Easy Math (Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry) (p. 52). Sarabande Books. Kindle Edition.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is an infinite number of ways to torture the soul with hopefulness.

[Nita · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book expanded my conception of award-winning poetry to include stuff that isn't my personal cup of tea. Seemed sort of bright but goofy and not particularly interested in meaningful deep stuff. Or perhaps her approach is too shiny and cutesy for me to have noticed depths.

I have met this poet IRL and she seems like a smart, quirky lady, but I guess her poems just aren't my steez.

Some good lines though which I'll add later

[Jo Oehrlein · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I expected a book of funny poems about math.

Math topics are mentioned in some of the poems, but they're really not that math-y and they didn't hit my sense of humor.

Probably suffered more from my expectations than anything else.

[cheeseblab · Rating 5 out of 5]

The voice of a disoriented wanderer--think Dante without Virgil, in whatever circle of hell you go to buy doughnuts and have to walk past a movie-screen-size rack of Scheiße porn. If you read a lot of poetry, you want to read this; if you never read poetry, you need to read this.

[Dieter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the economy and precision of her writing. I love the larger philosophical questions she will ask, but I don't know that she answers them. Can one? I enjoy that her imagery and objects are contemporary, mixed, mundane, engaging.

[Michael Bacon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved some of it and was not affected by some of it.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humorous, often sad and sometimes sharp, these poems grapple with the daily trouble and find the sweetness and the absurdity and in so doing, the hopefulness we can name and create.

[Dayna Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A prize winning volume of poetry that is a must read for those who love poems. Shapiro's verse is charming, funny, and poignant - sometimes all at once.