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How the Potato Chip Was Invented
Daniel M. Shapiro's first full-length collection of poems illuminates histories that never quite existed but probably should have. Game show panelists transcend their dated one-liners. Artists collapse under their own pride. A refreshing blend of humor and playful uneasiness, How the Potato Chip Was Invented simultaneously celebrates and lampoons what it means to be a celebrity.
- GenresPoetry
92 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 8, 2014
This is a set of really smart, often very funny prose poems that pack a quiet punch. I love how the poems use weird and fanciful intersections in/of pop culture to tell stories that sneak up on me as I'm reading. And they are so original: the entire middle section traces a kind of weird, compelling political narrative through the Match Game shows of the 70's. (Is that great or WHAT?) (Maybe I am EXACTLY the right age to appreciate this, because I remember Match Game, and had integrated it into my head in this non-analytical way because I was too young and too much a part of its time to question it.) I love the tone throughout this book--it could go so wrong and doesn't. I enjoy exactly how seriously it doesn't, and then does, take these figures in popular culture. I really appreciate the rhythm of the language--prose poetry is hard, and these poems sound deceptively "easy." These would be great poems to teach, especially when teaching the prose poem, or culture/satire/humor, and I'll definitely be reading them again.
March 29, 2014
It's hard to know what to call the pieces in this book. On the back of the book, they're billed as poems, but inside, they all look like prose and read like vignettes. At AWP in Seattle, I saw a guy flipping through it who insisted they were essays, and I can see why he might think that.
I'll just call the pieces in this book really, really damned smart.
Shapiro manages to combine image and idea in fantastically insightful ways, building unforeseen connections between unconnected events or people, conjuring imaginary histories from photographs or headlines or meetings-that-might-have-been. And while so much of this sideways glancing feels wry, so many poems opening with a smirk, and the commentary hiding in the lines is practically Warholesque (and yes, Warhol does make an appearance in the book), the overall effect is something quieter and more knowing than either a punchline or an overt dig at pop culture.
Case in point: in one poem, we open with the absurd scenario of the ousted Richard Nixon standing in line to see Star Wars. It's comical, until he gets inside the theater, where "Nixon rekindles his love affair with the dark" and we begin to assume this is going to be some kind of political commentary. And it is, until another joke emerges: "Scenes ahead, he cringes: Christ. I finally make it to the movies, and some girl in a sheet is making tapes." Then the commentary returns as Nixon whispers to his wife how much he admires Vader's Force-driven death grip, choking his underlings from afar. All this back-and-forth in so short a poetic scene, but then comes the last line, not so much a punchline or even a poetic turn as an undoing of all our expectations.
Other pieces weave together pop culture references even more brilliantly, as in the title poem, which somehow manages to combine the history of the potato chip with the Commodores and Anderson Cooper and Don McLean's "American Pie," each informing the other as though they were all part of the same story, which, in Shapiro's world, they are. Or in the poem "Characters," where the combination of British cinema and Chinese history and language ends in a perfect gut-punch of a revelation.
The poem about Don Knotts returning to his hometown is genuinely heartbreaking. And the middle section, a cycle rooted in the game show Match Game and each of its celebrity panelists, is brilliantly nostalgic in both the conventional sense (our warm recollections of a fun and bawdy tv spectacle) and in the traditional sense (the stomachache vertigo of falling into that awkward history).
But my favorite poem in the whole collection is probably "Archibald Discovers Air," a stunning meditation on life, masculinity, and American mythology. I won't sum this on up -- you need to read it for yourself.
No, seriously. You NEED to read it. Which is to say, you need to own this book.
I'll just call the pieces in this book really, really damned smart.
Shapiro manages to combine image and idea in fantastically insightful ways, building unforeseen connections between unconnected events or people, conjuring imaginary histories from photographs or headlines or meetings-that-might-have-been. And while so much of this sideways glancing feels wry, so many poems opening with a smirk, and the commentary hiding in the lines is practically Warholesque (and yes, Warhol does make an appearance in the book), the overall effect is something quieter and more knowing than either a punchline or an overt dig at pop culture.
Case in point: in one poem, we open with the absurd scenario of the ousted Richard Nixon standing in line to see Star Wars. It's comical, until he gets inside the theater, where "Nixon rekindles his love affair with the dark" and we begin to assume this is going to be some kind of political commentary. And it is, until another joke emerges: "Scenes ahead, he cringes: Christ. I finally make it to the movies, and some girl in a sheet is making tapes." Then the commentary returns as Nixon whispers to his wife how much he admires Vader's Force-driven death grip, choking his underlings from afar. All this back-and-forth in so short a poetic scene, but then comes the last line, not so much a punchline or even a poetic turn as an undoing of all our expectations.
Other pieces weave together pop culture references even more brilliantly, as in the title poem, which somehow manages to combine the history of the potato chip with the Commodores and Anderson Cooper and Don McLean's "American Pie," each informing the other as though they were all part of the same story, which, in Shapiro's world, they are. Or in the poem "Characters," where the combination of British cinema and Chinese history and language ends in a perfect gut-punch of a revelation.
The poem about Don Knotts returning to his hometown is genuinely heartbreaking. And the middle section, a cycle rooted in the game show Match Game and each of its celebrity panelists, is brilliantly nostalgic in both the conventional sense (our warm recollections of a fun and bawdy tv spectacle) and in the traditional sense (the stomachache vertigo of falling into that awkward history).
But my favorite poem in the whole collection is probably "Archibald Discovers Air," a stunning meditation on life, masculinity, and American mythology. I won't sum this on up -- you need to read it for yourself.
No, seriously. You NEED to read it. Which is to say, you need to own this book.
March 2, 2014
A very funny book of prose poems that plays with the way that we imbue the lives of celebrities with great meaning for our own. I didn't get all of the references (it plays more on celebs from the '70s, and I am of course a child of the '80s), but I really enjoyed most of the pieces. Also, I know the writer a little bit, and he's a swell fellow, so I'm glad to report I liked his book!
April 11, 2014
Shapiro's poems are top-notch explorations of the intersection between pop culture and private life. The section about The Match Game is simultaneously one of the saddest and funniest things I've encountered in recent memory.
November 23, 2015
This review, focusing on one particular poem in the collection, appeared in Voltage, http://voltagepoetry.com/2014/04/22/j...
Jessy Randall on Daniel M. Shapiro’s “Match Game ’73”
Posted on April 22, 2014
***
Match Game ’73
Too racy for the Game Show Network but fair game for the Internet, the episode asks a question so simple, the missing word is on the lips of oh so many silent players: The police commissioner said, “I think Batman and Robin are _______.”
Our contestant Sandy tries to disappear inside her royal-and-mauve tartan blouse. She grabs her brow, delighting our sponsor Excedrin. Begrudgingly, she speaks: Queer. Then applause, laughter, relief. Self-deprecation courtesy of Richard Dawson, in porn ‘stache and sideburns. Gene Rayburn passes the potato to Bobby Van, who gives Sandy a match with QUEER on his card. Van’s wife Elaine Joyce displays QUEERS. Another green triangle lights up for Sandy.
Charles Nelson Reilly of all people gets it wrong. Dawson and Brett Somers pour on the esoteric, but Nanette Fabray writes FAIRIES, which of course counts as QUEERS, as URBAN counts as BLACKS, as 57 CENTS for women counts as ONE DOLLAR for men. Before Sandy could take home a few hundred bucks, more blanks needed to be filled, entendres doubled, cigarettes relit, large-collared guffaws taped in front of a live studio audience. The era preserves itself with a recorder seemingly everywhere, a small portion of tape to be erased due to constraints of time.
***
What’s so amazing about this prose poem is how it repeats the words “queer” and “queers” in such a way that they are progressively and/or simultaneously embarrassing, funny, hurtful, meaningful, and not-meaningful. The turns of this poem, in other words, come so fast that you almost can’t keep up. From homophobia the poem turns to racism and sexism in a smart and savvy way, giving the reader a fill-in-the-blanks lesson that points out the obvious wrongness of the answers.
“Match Game ’73” makes an oft-heard statement about language – that language has political force – in a new and powerful way, and is funny at the same time. Such a feat brings to mind Nikki Giovanni’s marvelous poem “Seduction.” Shapiro’s poem seems light-hearted and pop-culture-referencey at first, but it turns into a bitter statement about injustice and complacency.
Jessy Randall on Daniel M. Shapiro’s “Match Game ’73”
Posted on April 22, 2014
***
Match Game ’73
Too racy for the Game Show Network but fair game for the Internet, the episode asks a question so simple, the missing word is on the lips of oh so many silent players: The police commissioner said, “I think Batman and Robin are _______.”
Our contestant Sandy tries to disappear inside her royal-and-mauve tartan blouse. She grabs her brow, delighting our sponsor Excedrin. Begrudgingly, she speaks: Queer. Then applause, laughter, relief. Self-deprecation courtesy of Richard Dawson, in porn ‘stache and sideburns. Gene Rayburn passes the potato to Bobby Van, who gives Sandy a match with QUEER on his card. Van’s wife Elaine Joyce displays QUEERS. Another green triangle lights up for Sandy.
Charles Nelson Reilly of all people gets it wrong. Dawson and Brett Somers pour on the esoteric, but Nanette Fabray writes FAIRIES, which of course counts as QUEERS, as URBAN counts as BLACKS, as 57 CENTS for women counts as ONE DOLLAR for men. Before Sandy could take home a few hundred bucks, more blanks needed to be filled, entendres doubled, cigarettes relit, large-collared guffaws taped in front of a live studio audience. The era preserves itself with a recorder seemingly everywhere, a small portion of tape to be erased due to constraints of time.
***
What’s so amazing about this prose poem is how it repeats the words “queer” and “queers” in such a way that they are progressively and/or simultaneously embarrassing, funny, hurtful, meaningful, and not-meaningful. The turns of this poem, in other words, come so fast that you almost can’t keep up. From homophobia the poem turns to racism and sexism in a smart and savvy way, giving the reader a fill-in-the-blanks lesson that points out the obvious wrongness of the answers.
“Match Game ’73” makes an oft-heard statement about language – that language has political force – in a new and powerful way, and is funny at the same time. Such a feat brings to mind Nikki Giovanni’s marvelous poem “Seduction.” Shapiro’s poem seems light-hearted and pop-culture-referencey at first, but it turns into a bitter statement about injustice and complacency.
August 22, 2015
There are moments among these prose poems that make me think, "wow, this guy is smart"--but by smart I mean nuanced in trivia. When we get to the second section, with its dated celebration of seventies game show culture (a culture I was raised on, and which comes with all sorts of nostalgic reverie), I found myself wondering if pop culture was all Shapiro could do. It isn't, of course, and many of these prose poems are funny, and some of the mash-ups in the final section are interesting both linguistically and conceptually, but in the end, this reader felt like he was treading water--it felt nice on a hot summer day, but I wasn't getting anywhere.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews