Pain Fantasy

by Jason Bredle

Jason Bredle's recent debut, 'Standing in Line for the Beast' (New Issues) has been praised by Barbara Hamby as a collection of "long loopy poems [that] make you laugh out loud and then crumple your heart like a Dixie cup." A poet of daring contradiction, Bredle continues to push his own boundaries in 'Pain Fantasy,' a book that will first delight readers with its humor and then stun them with the sincerity that lies at its core.

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2007

Reviews

[Shauta Marsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love a good poetry book for waiting at the BMV or anywhere for that matter. I keep this one in my purse for a good chuckle. Here's an excerpt from his poem in the book called The Idiot's Guide to Faking Your Own Death and Moving to Mexico

"Every few second I check the Bible
to see what Jesus is saying about me. The answer
is always nothing. Sometimes

he's condemning me to eternal damnation,
but usually nothing. Tonight I'm alone,
wearing my sex shorts, adrift amongst"

It goes on but you should just buy the book.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jason Bredle, Pain Fantasy (Red Morning Press, 2007)

It's now been far too long since I read Pain Fantasy for me to make witty, incisive comments about it. (I'm writing this roundabout Memorial Day, and according to the spreadhseet, I actually finished the book on February 21. Hey, at least I'm writing the review in the same year...) Though whether any of my comments are either witty or incisive is probably best left to the reader to decide in the first place. I haven't been able to come up with any words of wisdom about this book except “this rocks. Buy it.” Which doesn't tell you a great deal about it. But really, this stuff is awesome enough that I should be able to give you a short clip and let Bredle do all his own selling, right?

“I'm speaking the language in which love
and apricot mean the same, in which pool
and death mean the same. I said goodbye

in a suburb like this, years ago. I said
goodbye in a suburb like this, years ago.
According to Hercules, if we make an angel

out of ourselves, that is what we are...”
(--”The Idiot's Guide to Faking Your Own Death and Moving to Mexico”)

Come on. That's awesome. It's sloppy and rude and sits around in your living room in its underwear drinking Blatz and watching WWE, getting up every once in a while to piss in the vases in the foyer, and yet once you have read it you can't imagine life without it. This one will be on my best reads of the year list without a doubt. Now, go buy it. ****

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really weird, totally great original and strange book of poems.... It's hard to really explain what is happening in these poems, because they don't necessarily seem to do the kinds of things that poems usually do. But here's my grasp at it: these poems are containers for the strange things that wing through Bredle's head as he goes about his daily business-- funny things, though they are often very bleak, sometimes disconnected and random seeming, but he is often really successful at stitching them together into something that isn't necessarily a coherent whole but which reassembles itself in front of your eyes into something that feels emotionally honest.

They are also very very funny. Did I mention that already?

[Elizabeth Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ignore the provocative cover art, this collection is way better than that picture lets on. Familiar, young and poignant, these cute-yet-tragic poems are dead-on layers of thought & experience, interior & exterior environment, and those weird little imaginary plays & conversations everyone dreams up in their own minds instead of paying attention to the person speaking to them. An excellent read.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is funny and bizarre. it's like an mtv shark about to bite your throat open and lick the back of your throat and that feels pretty damn good sometimes.