Break the Nose of Every Beautiful Thing

by Jack Cooper

Curiosity drives Jack Cooper’s debut pamphlet. Drawing from his experience in biomedical research, Cooper finds severe beauty at a cellular level. A maggot is ‘a white wave without water’; mould in a student flat is ‘a firework display exploding in slow motion’. The joy of discovery is a common thread that ties queer desire and dissection to Gilgamesh and genetically-engineered squids. Just as an egg becomes a fly and a boy becomes a man, we witness a metamorphosis of the scientific to the abstract. In these poems, a body is never finished.

Break the Nose of Every Beautiful Thing won an Eric Gregory Award in 2022.

Genres: Poetry

Published July 11, 2023

Reviews

[Goodreeds User · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic stuff - Cooper has a real knack for taking things we overlook and making them feel so weird and new... a breath of fresh, strange, sparkling air

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How would the first person to see the building blocks of a body / think of his own? // Curiosity is a dividing cell; / something that can't help but make more of itself.” The scientific imagery of poems like ‘Micrographia, 1665’ is typical of the rest of Jack Cooper’s debut poetry pamphlet, Break the Nose of Every Beautiful Thing — using the biomedical register of Cooper’s professional background to explore more personal, intimate, interior matters. The poems are, unsurprisingly, very bodily as a result, such as in ‘Immunogold labelling for electron microscopy’: “Sometimes we can only see the shape of something / through the marks others make on them. // left you knowing exactly who I was / and what I would never be.” Elsewhere, Cooper implores: “Savour my pain. / Understand that I am willing to suffer for you, / however briefly.” Poems like ‘Mould’ and ‘Apoptosis’ are rich and bold in their visual descriptions, while poems like ‘Peccadillo’ are studies in emotional realism: “Flattery only works if the flattered believes / they have been paid an honest compliment: / that they deserve it. // I deserve it.” And then there are poems like ‘Crash’, which bridges the poetic and natural spheres: “A voice without language is still an instrument / that he breaks against the shore. // The sea never asked to be a metaphor / and I never asked to be a mother.” Meanwhile in such poems as ‘Apron strings’, memory and family are seen through obscure lenses: “Arguments are recursive islands, / each pettier than the last, never the last. // You felled mother's last hope, that slim sapling. / Without guilt, I fell in love like wasps through wine.” A first pamphlet as exciting as it is moving… full collection when?

[Sheila Heard · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many flashes of inspired word choices in Jack’s book of poems. He is indeed a science communicator. I love the image of a cell as ‘a microscopic prison, petrified’ & curiosity being a dividing cell. Beautiful writing.

[Emily Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

really interesting collection. great poems and original ideas. rtc.