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The Second Sex
A second collection from a poet of “sheer joy and dizzy command” (The New York Times)
Upon its publication in 2012, Alien vs. Predator, the debut collection by Michael Robbins, became one of the hottest and most celebrated works of poetry in the country, winning acclaim for its startling freshness and originality, and leading critics to say that it was the most likely book in years to open up poetry to a new readership.
Robbins’s poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and irrationally exuberant, mashing up high and low culture with “a sky-blue originality of utterance” (The New York Times). The thirty-six new poems in The Second Sex carry over the music, attitude, hilarity, and vulgarity of Alien vs. Predator, while also working deeper autobiographical and political veins.
Upon its publication in 2012, Alien vs. Predator, the debut collection by Michael Robbins, became one of the hottest and most celebrated works of poetry in the country, winning acclaim for its startling freshness and originality, and leading critics to say that it was the most likely book in years to open up poetry to a new readership.
Robbins’s poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and irrationally exuberant, mashing up high and low culture with “a sky-blue originality of utterance” (The New York Times). The thirty-six new poems in The Second Sex carry over the music, attitude, hilarity, and vulgarity of Alien vs. Predator, while also working deeper autobiographical and political veins.
- GenresPoetryCollections
64 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2014
12 people are currently reading
146 people want to read
About the author
Michael Robbins
7 books68 followersAuthor of the poetry collections Alien vs. Predator (Penguin, 2012) and The Second Sex (Penguin, 2014). Winner of The Believer's Reader Survey for Best Book of Poetry, 2012. Recipient of Poetry Magazine's Editors Prize for Reviewing, 2013. A critical book, Equipment for Living, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
July 31, 2018
It’s not you it’s me.
June 8, 2025
Really three-and-a-half stars, but goosed for two instances that redefine "je n'ais se quoi"
1. The poem that ends with the line "Nostalgia's just another word that starts with No", which is a great starting point for further Robbins poem, a David Sedaris essay, or a sermon, depending on your congregational or ecumenical leanings.
2. The first line of "Poem Beginning With a Line from Samuel Johnson" is absolutely unexpected and reminiscent of the joke Marty Funkhouser told Jerry Seinfeld on a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. I am sure I woke up people in the adjoining hotel room. Utterly delightful, in an absolutely filthy way.
1. The poem that ends with the line "Nostalgia's just another word that starts with No", which is a great starting point for further Robbins poem, a David Sedaris essay, or a sermon, depending on your congregational or ecumenical leanings.
2. The first line of "Poem Beginning With a Line from Samuel Johnson" is absolutely unexpected and reminiscent of the joke Marty Funkhouser told Jerry Seinfeld on a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. I am sure I woke up people in the adjoining hotel room. Utterly delightful, in an absolutely filthy way.
February 13, 2021
These poems are fun, nonsensical, and puerile. Robbins is brilliant at mixing idiomatic language and pop culture in a blender with plenty of ridiculous rhymes. There isn't much substance to what he writes, but I still enjoyed his playfulness (and his admittedly juvenile sense of humor).
July 10, 2017
2.5
Clearly this dude's not my poetic cup of tea.
Clearly this dude's not my poetic cup of tea.
January 23, 2018
This is probably the only thing you can do with poetry now.
February 16, 2019
Contemporary poetry. Some poems better than others, as in any collection.
Some imagery makes me uncomfortable, but I understand that that's probably the point.
Some imagery makes me uncomfortable, but I understand that that's probably the point.
May 8, 2020
Dude really likes Led Zeppelin.
I love pop culture references more than most people, but this... not for me.
I love pop culture references more than most people, but this... not for me.
June 18, 2016
Robbins’ writing style has serious rhythm. Most poems seem almost literally lyrical – as if they're written as hip hop songs. Pop culture references are littered throughout alongside modern idioms and ancient Greek epics. Seeing Robbins’ markedly different style and voice with his references and winks and nudges is instructive in showing poetry can be a form of modern entertainment, not always describing some complex emotion or visual beauty.
Big Country is one of my favorite poems in the collection simply for its opening line. The way Robbins almost dances “Fiddle no further, Fuhrer” is wonderful. His mastery of language is clear throughout the collection and shines here in this poem. The way he twists the idiom “Rome wasn’t built in a day” to “Rome is built./ It took all day.” was especially entertaining. Here, Robbins takes the common and mundane and breathes into it new life.
Similarly, I thought Out Here in the Fields stood out for its rhythm, which Robbins sets and breaks (slightly!), creating expectations and twisting them to keep things unexpected. Robbins sets the contract with a stanza of four three beat lines, but immediately begins the second stanza with “You ask what time the elephant” which has four beats and breaks the contract almost immediately. Robbins doesn’t follow conventions with his poems, but still they have a rhythmical poetic quality to them. It’s interesting.
Sonnets to Edward Snowden is another interesting poem which surprised at me first since I didn’t realize this collection was so recent. The line “Ask not what Dew can do for you” is an amusing reference and the poem continues in a sort of corporate vein but some of it feels a bit nonsensical (carbohydrate gel?). However, this is one poem that “snaps shut” in a sense – the imagery of the stocks in the Dow index rising fits so well with the “Rah! Rah! Corporatism” throughout the poem.
Overall many of the poems were entertaining. They stood out because of memorable lines, and the way Robbins played with language was instructive in the extreme. Maybe the references are flying right over my head (this is the most probable explanation I think) but much of the collection’s works just didn’t click in the way I’ve expected poems to “click” from my experience. Sometimes it felt as if some words and phrases were chosen simply for the rhyme they would complete, and there wasn’t as much actual thought put into them. But I gues that's part of the fun.
I’m not sure if there were any poems that were cohesive in the sense of Blake or Dickinson. Maybe Robbins wasn’t intending for everything to “snap” together. But the collection did leave me thinking – what does it mean to be a poem?
Big Country is one of my favorite poems in the collection simply for its opening line. The way Robbins almost dances “Fiddle no further, Fuhrer” is wonderful. His mastery of language is clear throughout the collection and shines here in this poem. The way he twists the idiom “Rome wasn’t built in a day” to “Rome is built./ It took all day.” was especially entertaining. Here, Robbins takes the common and mundane and breathes into it new life.
Similarly, I thought Out Here in the Fields stood out for its rhythm, which Robbins sets and breaks (slightly!), creating expectations and twisting them to keep things unexpected. Robbins sets the contract with a stanza of four three beat lines, but immediately begins the second stanza with “You ask what time the elephant” which has four beats and breaks the contract almost immediately. Robbins doesn’t follow conventions with his poems, but still they have a rhythmical poetic quality to them. It’s interesting.
Sonnets to Edward Snowden is another interesting poem which surprised at me first since I didn’t realize this collection was so recent. The line “Ask not what Dew can do for you” is an amusing reference and the poem continues in a sort of corporate vein but some of it feels a bit nonsensical (carbohydrate gel?). However, this is one poem that “snaps shut” in a sense – the imagery of the stocks in the Dow index rising fits so well with the “Rah! Rah! Corporatism” throughout the poem.
Overall many of the poems were entertaining. They stood out because of memorable lines, and the way Robbins played with language was instructive in the extreme. Maybe the references are flying right over my head (this is the most probable explanation I think) but much of the collection’s works just didn’t click in the way I’ve expected poems to “click” from my experience. Sometimes it felt as if some words and phrases were chosen simply for the rhyme they would complete, and there wasn’t as much actual thought put into them. But I gues that's part of the fun.
I’m not sure if there were any poems that were cohesive in the sense of Blake or Dickinson. Maybe Robbins wasn’t intending for everything to “snap” together. But the collection did leave me thinking – what does it mean to be a poem?
March 28, 2015
I caught this book when i was browsing the bookshelves of my bookstore. Having never heard of his first poetry book, "Aliens v. Predator" I was completely blown away by his style. This can't be poetry right? It just seems.. too cool.
This book blended high/low brow culture, mixed in references about Ludacris, Michael Jackson, Edward Snowden, politics, religion and managed to drop "This is my handle; this is my spout." in a way that could only make you chuckle.
Some of my favorites:
"Who is the United States?
The grassy knoll elaborates.
Ask not what the Dew can do for you.
Ask about our special rates" - Sonnets to Edward Snowden
"The coyote drives her in a false-bottomed van.
He drops her in a desert. The bluffs are tan.
She'll get a job at Chili's picking up butts.
I feel ya, Ophelia, I say to my nuts.
And there is pansies. That's for thoughts." - The Second Sex
This isn't poetry that I'm used to seeing. It's sometimes grimey, and vile but it's a really interesting commentary on some of the crazy things that we are surrounded by everyday but don't really stop to think about it. I love the mix of advertisements, buzzwords, celebrity references and political statements.
December 17, 2015
This poetry is certainly full of pithy and hilarious one-liners. I enjoyed it for that. BUT, as far a poetry goes, its pretty lousy. It's as if the author had a notebook full or jokes he strung together without any unifying rhyme of reason. Any single poem can substitute for any other poem, and really you could mix and match any stanza from any poem in the book with any stanza in another poem and get the same effect. A bunch of random joke and ironic pop-cultural references and puns strung together. I have to admit, I laughed at the cleverness of some of the lines, but the book, all in all, is about as deep as a puddle, unless you consider ironic detachment and puns meaningful as anything beyond ironic detachment and puns. Or maybe I'm confusing this book with his other book AVP. Doesn't matter, they're a variation on the same them.
March 8, 2015
This is such invigorating verse. Robbins draws fragments from pop culture and classic poems and combines them into cultural criticism that is fresh, bewildering, vulgar, and delightful. He has the mashup sensibilities of Girl Talk and the cadence of a great rapper. A NYT review of his first volume, Alien vs. Predator, raved about the book while casually mentioning that Robbins didn't seem to have much to say. I knew what the reviewer meant, and yet I love both volumes, and I'm more and more willing to spend time wondering what's underneath the surface of these poems. Because deep or not, they're so much fun on the surface.
From "Sonnets to Edward Snowden":
Who is the United States?
The grassy knoll elaborates.
Ask not what the Dew can do for you.
ask about our special rates ...
From "Sonnets to Edward Snowden":
Who is the United States?
The grassy knoll elaborates.
Ask not what the Dew can do for you.
ask about our special rates ...
July 21, 2015
like avp, robbins is dealing with the clash between what is supposedly high and what is supposedly low culture, trading references of each for the other. and like avp, his choice to write in rhyme is also a commentary on the notion of high/low culture, and the fickleness of taste. then, what here, is different? it's a little less fun, i guess. a little more political. the politics are hard to pin down, which is refreshing actually "science is the opium of the elite" etc. im alwqys worried that reference replaces experience, and that's no different here, but robbins is, with reference doing something a little different than just pointing his finger at nostalgia and expecting everyone to follow along, so it deserves a little more attention.
March 30, 2015
I'll tell you this: the good poems are so fucking good that they forgive the bad ones. It might just be nice if Robbins gave himself a chance to breathe and cull out the latter. But also, maybe the others wouldn't seem so special if they weren't surrounded by lesser friends. I feel like that's a concept Robbins would appreciate - or at least jot into a stanza, one left fluttering down behind as he races on forward at the speed of culture.
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2015/03...
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2015/03...
June 1, 2016
Michael Robbins’ poems are carefully crafted references of American pop culture, current events and world literary history. He loves alliteration and assonance; the poems are learned, yet fun. As Edmund Wilson wrote of Wallace Stevens in the New Republic: “Even when you do not know what he is saying, you know he is saying it well.”
September 11, 2015
This does not have quite the same audacity as AVP. A poet more skilled at synthesizing history and autobiography with fun, to be sure, but perhaps he's lost a bit of the punch along the way. Worth the read.
September 6, 2015
fizzy wordplay and witty allusions - if you like those for their own sake, this may be the book for you. if not, not. I did like his musicians who died poem with its euphonious couplet "Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer,/Ronnie Dio, Donna Summer."
September 18, 2015
Mostly for type of reader that enjoy lyric in songs or reading poetry more or less in written form...Was different ease to read & follow not long about but has a smooth comfortable cushion feel to it thought it play on words
December 26, 2014
Perhaps not quite as novel as his first collection, but it's both more personal and more political, and every bit as quotable.
January 28, 2015
No thanks.
February 17, 2015
Started strong, but the repetitive ticks lost their power over time. Still some great pieces in here, and I'm looking forward to reading AvP
April 26, 2015
Maybe not quite as fresh as "Alien vs. Predator," but still the kind of poetry that makes you laugh and dance and do spit-takes involuntarily. So, good.
June 18, 2015
High brow, low brow knowhow. Hive mind recall of Latin, literature, and the sacred pop lyric bubble burst flow into your brain and out of your mouth like ice cream sundae school.
June 25, 2015
The only poet that matters. Read him out loud to your loved ones (well, maybe not grandma, unless she is super cool).
August 13, 2015
This is what happens when Emily Dickinson sits on a rhyming dictionary and gives birth nine months later without dashes.
March 19, 2016
Clearly written contemporary collection of poetry by Michael Robbins. I enjoyed this read and would recommend it to anyone looking for something new.
October 13, 2016
Almost as good as https://storify.com/mpaldridge/it-s-a...
June 24, 2015
SO MUCH FUN
June 9, 2015
These poems are playful and complicated. I could definitely give it a second reading.
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October 23, 2017I adore this but I'm not smart enough to elucidate my reasoning. Current favorite poet.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews