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Everything is Everything
In her fifth collection of poetry, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz polishes her obsessions until they gleam. Whether she is exhuming the bizarre ("Cryptozoology" and "A Short History of Unusual Fish"), exorcising her demons, ("Hog Butcher of Workshop Table" and "On Why I Shouldn't Read Books") or celebrating the uncelebrated oddballs of the world ("Little Heard True Stories of Benjamin Franklin" and "Crack Squirrels"), Aptowicz's poetry sings and singes. Everything is Everything illuminates the dark corners of the curiosity cabinet, shining the light on everything that is utterly strange, wonderfully absurd and 100% true.
- GenresPoetry
116 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
4 people are currently reading
327 people want to read
About the author
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
19 books118 followersCristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is an American poet who was recently awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.
She is the author of five books of poetry, including the recently released Everything is Everthing (Write Bloody Publishing), as well as the canonical slam history, Words in Your Face (Soft Skull Press), which U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote “leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature.”
Founder of the three-time National Poetry Slam Championship venue, NYC-Urbana, Cristin has toured widely with her poetry, at venues as diverse as NYC’s Joe’s Pub, LA’s Largo Theatre and Australia’s Sydney Opera House. Cristin’s poetry books are published on Write Bloody Press, and available at all online & brick-and-order bookstores.
Her poetry has appeared (or is forthcoming) in McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Rattle, Pank, Barrelhouse, MonkeyBicycle, decomP, Conduit and La Petite Zine (among others), as well as in anthologies such as Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Spoken Word, Learn Then Burn: Modern Poetry For the Classroom, Bowery Women and Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (among others).
She is the author of five books of poetry, including the recently released Everything is Everthing (Write Bloody Publishing), as well as the canonical slam history, Words in Your Face (Soft Skull Press), which U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote “leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature.”
Founder of the three-time National Poetry Slam Championship venue, NYC-Urbana, Cristin has toured widely with her poetry, at venues as diverse as NYC’s Joe’s Pub, LA’s Largo Theatre and Australia’s Sydney Opera House. Cristin’s poetry books are published on Write Bloody Press, and available at all online & brick-and-order bookstores.
Her poetry has appeared (or is forthcoming) in McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Rattle, Pank, Barrelhouse, MonkeyBicycle, decomP, Conduit and La Petite Zine (among others), as well as in anthologies such as Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Spoken Word, Learn Then Burn: Modern Poetry For the Classroom, Bowery Women and Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (among others).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 11, 2010
If you should ever cross paths with someone who seems to think that poetry can't be both funny and good, you need to present that person with this book, grin and walk away.
August 7, 2018
[sixth read for booktubeathon 2018, fulfilling the something i want to do challenge]
4.5/5 stars
This was...... surprisingly dark, in a very good way. I love Aptowicz's style and the things she writes poetry about, this collection is a real display of how you can take anything you read about or experience and turn it into an incredible poem. I really want to own my own copy of this to re-read, I think it'll be great for my second year of University when we start researching history and events to inspire our own work.
4.5/5 stars
This was...... surprisingly dark, in a very good way. I love Aptowicz's style and the things she writes poetry about, this collection is a real display of how you can take anything you read about or experience and turn it into an incredible poem. I really want to own my own copy of this to re-read, I think it'll be great for my second year of University when we start researching history and events to inspire our own work.
May 5, 2014
Everything is Everything is a laugh of real talk. Aptowicz rants about life on the road as a poet. Things your boyfriend might say. Presidents, Science, and just strange bizarre things. I pretty much devoured this poetry in one sitting.
She is also very informational. Some bizarre things learned as well as normal learning. My overall favored poems I'll list as always. This is a book we should all own.
-At Night on Tour
-If My Mom Had Known About Nebraska
-Taft
-A Short History of Unusual Fish
-Crack Squirrels
-How Carpophorus Did It
-Use Your Words
-Friday the Thirteenth
She is also very informational. Some bizarre things learned as well as normal learning. My overall favored poems I'll list as always. This is a book we should all own.
-At Night on Tour
-If My Mom Had Known About Nebraska
-Taft
-A Short History of Unusual Fish
-Crack Squirrels
-How Carpophorus Did It
-Use Your Words
-Friday the Thirteenth
Read
October 15, 2022Overall, I didn’t like this.
The Carpophorus of it all got to be jarring. (One whole poem on its own, on top of a couple of references in other poems in the book...all in relation to this Roman man who apparently trained animals to rape people. She gives emphasis to the giraffes.) Not to mention, the Albert Fish poem - A Short History of Unusual Fish. (I’m with the ex-boyfriend on that one.)
The Nebraska Safe Haven legislation of 2008 was news to me, though - parents being legally allowed to leave a child up to the age of 18 at a hospital without explanation as to why. Having looked into it; apparently people used that law to abandon their teenagers, and people travelled their to do it. Nebraska had to revise the law to apply to child up to 30 days old.
The fact that I am slowly reading Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey at the moment made this opening from Be Prepared hit harder:
“When the Black Plague hit the Saxon army in the 1340s,
they didn't let this stop them. Instead they catapulted
the diseased corpses of their fellow soldiers directly
into the enemy camp. It worked. Within a year, half
of Scotland was dead. Half the Saxons were dead too,
but at least they knew how to put their dead to work.”
Crack Squirrels (exactly what it sounds like) and Ten Things I’ve Told People About Dachshunds, Sure That They Cared were two poems in line with my interests. For the most part I didn’t really vibe with this book, even though it had been on my to-read list for nearly a decade.
My favorite part may be the final lines of Morning Cup of Joe:
“Some days I feel like a silent era starlet,
smashing my palm flat to my chest,
just to keep the damn thing on the inside.”
The Carpophorus of it all got to be jarring. (One whole poem on its own, on top of a couple of references in other poems in the book...all in relation to this Roman man who apparently trained animals to rape people. She gives emphasis to the giraffes.) Not to mention, the Albert Fish poem - A Short History of Unusual Fish. (I’m with the ex-boyfriend on that one.)
The Nebraska Safe Haven legislation of 2008 was news to me, though - parents being legally allowed to leave a child up to the age of 18 at a hospital without explanation as to why. Having looked into it; apparently people used that law to abandon their teenagers, and people travelled their to do it. Nebraska had to revise the law to apply to child up to 30 days old.
The fact that I am slowly reading Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey at the moment made this opening from Be Prepared hit harder:
“When the Black Plague hit the Saxon army in the 1340s,
they didn't let this stop them. Instead they catapulted
the diseased corpses of their fellow soldiers directly
into the enemy camp. It worked. Within a year, half
of Scotland was dead. Half the Saxons were dead too,
but at least they knew how to put their dead to work.”
Crack Squirrels (exactly what it sounds like) and Ten Things I’ve Told People About Dachshunds, Sure That They Cared were two poems in line with my interests. For the most part I didn’t really vibe with this book, even though it had been on my to-read list for nearly a decade.
My favorite part may be the final lines of Morning Cup of Joe:
“Some days I feel like a silent era starlet,
smashing my palm flat to my chest,
just to keep the damn thing on the inside.”
Want to read
May 18, 2025Cutting is for Crack Squirrels
By Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
By Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
February 4, 2010
"Often quirky, funny, and downright bizarre, Everything Is Everything addresses numerous topics via confessional free verse. A poem like 'At the Office Holiday Party' is rife with hard-hitting lines: 'A gaggle of models comes shrieking into the bar / to further punctuate why I sometimes hate living / in this city. They glitter, a shiny gang of scissors' (30). This poem is rare insofar as it masterfully employs both humor and sadness. In many cases, Aptowicz will either go for the jugular with comedy ('Little Heard True Stories About Benjamin Franklin,' 'A Short History of Unusual Fish,' 'Crack Squirrels,' 'Ten Things I’ve Told People About Dachshunds, Sure that They Cared,' etc.) or tragedy ('If My Mom Had Known About Nebraska,' 'Things We Didn’t Talk About,' 'Season’s Greetings,' 'Friday the Thirteenth,' etc.)...."
Read the rest in the February 2010 issue of decomP .
Read the rest in the February 2010 issue of decomP .
January 29, 2012
As always, Aptowicz doesn't fail to amaze and inspire with her poetry. Every one of these poems is great in it's own way. From the laughing-so-hard-you're-crying-on-the-train-while-reading hilarity that is 'Why I Shouldn't Read Books' and 'In Lieu of His Writing Any New Poetry, The Author Critiques The Four Line Song She Heard Her Boyfriend Spontaneously Create While Drunkenly Walking Up Their Apartment Building’s Stairwell' to snickering-out-loud-on-the-train-while-reading poems like 'Every Winter, People Think My Boyfriend is Elvis Costello', there is always that hint of... something. Even in more serious poems, there is always that little bit of humor that reminds you that it's Aptowicz's work that you are reading. And it's damn good.
June 24, 2010
COA doesn't take the fire escape to some third floor window; she enters poems through the front door and it works for her--she charms. Read this book on the subway.
December 30, 2014
Strange and wonderful.
Mmm
Chicago deep dish
Things we don't talk about
Questionably Unhelpful Behavior
good poems don't have to rhyme
they talk about truth
Mmm
Chicago deep dish
Things we don't talk about
Questionably Unhelpful Behavior
good poems don't have to rhyme
they talk about truth
October 12, 2015
Disappointed:( this did not feel like poetry, but rather, prosaic attempts to sound clever or smart (i.e. By saying presidential facts that like, everyone knows) with weird line breaks.
April 7, 2020
Not the first time I have read this but I guess not on Goodreads.
A good read but not her best book.
I love rereading her poetry books, read 4 recently.
A good read but not her best book.
I love rereading her poetry books, read 4 recently.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews