Stupid Birds

by Logan Ryan Smith

**OUT OF PRINT** Stupid Birds is a collection of chapbooks, long poems, and a few singular poems written between the years 2004 thru 2006. Table of Contents: Logan's Lyric (august 2004), ghosts spiders &dogs (september 2004), red apple falls (november 2004), Childish Poem or The Welcomed Beating (november 2004), this is affront you pig (january 2005), Where I Came When I Was Married (february 2005), into the fall (february 2005), NARCISSUS 2000 (march 2005), Much Like You Shark (august 2006).

Genres: Poetry

164 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Logan Ryan Smith writes dark, imaginative fiction with a unique sense of humor and madness. His work appeals to fans of authors such as J.G. Ballard, Chuck Palahniuk, Michel Faber, Bret Easton Ellis, Shirley Jackson, and Hunter S. Thompson. The God of Salt & Light, released early 2020, is a fast-paced, disorienting, yet poetic foray into the mind of a messianic madman that worships the Salton Sea and seeks to spread his faith. The Sun My Destiny, his previous book, is a psychological sci-fi drama that uses the dystopian landscape of a massive garbage dump as the background for familial relationships and grave, internal struggles. His book previous to that, Y is for Fidelity, is a disturbingly comedic tale of friendship and self-discovery that takes twists and turns opposite of every expectation. Western Palaces is the follow-up to 2015’s Enjoy Me. Each are collections of interlinked stories telling the bizarre, fantastical, and often hilarious tales of Luke, a down-and-out writer living in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin where zombies, bipedal crickets, ghosts, and monsters always linger in the peripherals. My Eyes Are Black Holes, released between Enjoy Me and Western Palaces, is a twisted novella of false memory, madness, and violence that pays homage to haunted house stories while never actually slipping into the genre. Logan describes it as his "unhaunted haunted house story."

Though primarily focusing on fiction now, his poetry books include The Singers & The Notes (Dusie Press, 2007), Stupid Birds (Transmission Press, 2007), Bug House (Mission Cleaners Books, 2013), and Humans & Horses (Transmission Press, 2018). Logan’s work has appeared in, among others, Hobart Journal, The New York Times, New American Writing, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and Great Lakes Review, which nominated his story “Bret Easton Ellis” for a Pushcart Prize. He has lived in San Francisco, Boulder, and Chicago, and now lives in Sacramento.

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have read this more than once and LOVE IT! One of my FAVORITE BOOKS this year!

It's a BEST OF, or, collection, which is the same to me as I like it that much. Chapbook collections from 2004 to 2006. It's one weird moment after another, and I LOVE WEIRD:

"take
this
for
all
the
blood
be-
hind
the
eyes
that
watch
this
take
it
from
them
and
call
me"

When the FUCK is Goodreads going to have HTML with spacing? They think novels and other such crap prose is all that exists! I want to be able to center such things as Logan Ryan Smith has it in his book. You know? Anyway...

From the VERY opening piece "Logan's Lyric" you're HOOKED if you have any sense! By the time you get to "this is affront you pig" you're intoxicated with his work.

"I'd like to perform
in soap operas
and be a wolf
but not a pig

though I'm sure I'd become one

my fat head filled with my fat face

I'll drink the poison they pour"

If you still don't believe me then click on his name and download the free PDF of "Much Like You Shark," which is in this book. After that you'll HAVE to buy STUPID BIRDS!

CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love his early work!

[MKMKMK · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always know that a book is important to me when it occurs to me while reading it how much I love poetry, how come I haven't been writing poetry lately, why aren't I writing poetry, what exactly is poetry, etc. Most of the work in this I had already read as pieces in original chapbook form but I thought I'd try and see how it all came together as one body. Logan's work is unlike any poetry I know. For some reason I can't see Logan's work without Logan. The strange juxtapositions of thoughts, thefts, songs, confessions, utterances, truths, ridiculousness. I love the experience of it. Is Logan the Andy Warhol of the contemporary poetry scene? Yes. Would he want to kill me for thinking of such a thing. Probably.

The biggest surprise for me was the lovely "Into the Fall" section. I love the ending of the poem:

"other oh fuck we
do love each other

fuck I love you"

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first and last poems in the collection were not bad but the rest dragged this down to two stars.