Personal Problem

by Brendan Joyce, Kevin Latimer (Editor)

On the heels of his 2020 debut Love & Solidarity, Brendan has returned with a brand new collection of poems that circle his obsessions; money, class, work and the political economy of ecological collapse. In order to find the language for the means of economic exploitation and immiseration, Brendan focuses on its tempo, reordering our perception of time in the way capitalism imagines it; as a series of equations between commodities.

Genres: Poetry

68 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2023

Reviews

[Nia Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book of poetry. I read it twice because I felt like I wanted to sit with a lot of these poems. This work felt like an acknowledgement of the state of the world, of what our governments want us to believe vs what is actually going on. Some of these really touched me like "Use Value", "Class Character", and I really loved the strong start of "Value Form" & many more. Some of them made me laugh, some of them put me in deep thought and reflection.

Page 18 and Page 23 have the same title, "Heist". I found this interesting and wondered if they were meant to be a continuation, but after reading them back to back I wasn't quite sure.

The iconic line: "Somewhere in the city, a wage steals itself."

[rory · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really enjoyed this and am thankful for the ARC i received!! i usually find poetry that uses modern language to not be for me, but I was happily surprised with how much I connected with the poems in here. I was particularly fond of the poems "Ides" and "Incoming Sob."

I'm excited to go back and re-read this and see what new meaning i can discern from a second read.