I Have A Gun

by Graham Irvin

There’s a gun inside the soul of every living thing.

Made of anger.

Made of shame.

Genres: Poetry

158 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2024

Reviews

[Nathaniel Duggan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed Graham Irvin's first book 'Liver Mush', in which Graham proved himself to be a clever, funny, and talented poet. Liver mush seems like a hard topic to write about. The phrase 'liver mush' is inherently not exciting or interesting. The author, then, must go to great lengths to make this subject interesting. 'I Have a Gun' suffers maybe the opposite problem -- guns are an immediately charged and powerful topic. My concern going into this read was that it would end up 'preachy', ceremonious, etc: it would be less of a book and more of a lecture. My concerns were for nothing. Graham navigates his second book as elegantly as he did his first. His gun poems are funny, sad, insightful, and provocative. He doesn't seek to give answers to the general question of 'gun?' with this book. But he's also not cravenly dodging that question, I don't think. It's good. I liked it. I was especially a sucker for the gun haikus. I also give bonus points to Graham for including the proper technical definition of a mass shooting. Most people think that a mass shooting needs to involve an elementary school. Actually, a mass shooting just needs to involve ~3 victims in a public space.

[crowjonah · Rating 5 out of 5]

cured my depression

[Coleman Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

pow pow pow pow

[Christian McDonough · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very good :-)
The form of the book was very exciting and inspirational to me. The way he confronted the reader in a playful and threatening way and exercised control over you, commanding you to think of something then chastising you for that thought, was really engaging and fun and interesting.
My favorite instance of this was with the Belgian gun manufacturer during WW2. He sets you up to hate him then kind of pulls the rug out from under you. I didn't buy into hating the guy, but it was still really fun and engaging. Maybe even more so. It let me imagine another reader being spoken to and made the book feel more rich and multifaceted, like we were in a conversation with an intimate crowd. I felt like I was playing a strange game with the narrator.
That's something that I really loved about the book. It felt like I was in the room with him and he was just talking to me, or else putting on a little show for me and bringing me into a little world with him. Like he was on a stage and asking me to step up onto it.
In the second half though, I felt more of a distance from him and it felt intentional, things started to get more serious and the narrator seemed to show how he really thought of a gun, or power, as a yearning for connection. Wishing you could make someone understand you, make someone accept you, force them into empathy. It led nicely to the climax of the book. The year of school shootings.
And by that point, I cared enough for the narrator that I wanted to stick with him. I didn't skim past the repetitive instances of mass murder, I felt them being written out with him. I wanted to be there with him and feel that kind of empty, statistical dread.
Overall, there's a wonderful lightness and pleasantness to the book, even in the face of the imagined and real violence that it considers. I think this was a goal of the book, as it's captured well in the quote that opens it: "Adolescent rebellion is man's eternal struggle for freedom."
The book is playful and jokey, but personal and real, it seems to struggle for a kind of freedom from the concept of a gun. Seems to try to comfort the reader in a way, to learn along with them. To consider with them. To let them know it's ok, that a gun doesn't have to be a gun.

[Andrew Rivas · Rating 5 out of 5]

You need Graham’s gun. It’s a metaphorical gun, but not in the way you’re thinking. It’s also a book, but not in the way you’re thinking. It’ll blow the back out of your skull, but not in the way you’re thinking.

In “I Have a Gun,” Graham meticulously deconstructs the concept of a gun, lays its pieces bare, and then riddles the pieces with bullets. He takes a thousand intrusive thoughts, stuffs them into a trench coat, and arms each of them with the FN Herstal .308 Sniper Rifle.

After reading “Liver Mush” and now “I Have a Gun,” I am convinced that Graham’s voice is completely singular and that no one else could have written this book this well. It’s the perfect evolution of the style and structure he used in LM but equipped with an auto sear.

Only Graham has the balls and the raw SKILL to make me laugh at the line “On January 1, seven people were killed in a mass shooting.” Do you know how hard that is? To write a chapter about mass shootings that is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking?

“I Have a Gun” is 150 pages of poems and prose, but it’s also an examination of the difference between the hypothetical, the metaphorical, and the real. You should buy it.

[Kyle Seibel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tied for the best indie book release of the year with Mike Nagel’s Culdesac.

So much writing feels completely anonymous to me. Like anyone could have written it. Smoothed edges. Punches pulled. Simulated emotional depth. I HAVE A GUN by Graham Irvin is the mirror opposite, a singular achievement of style, vision, and voice—an epic in miniature that feels genuinely transgressive.

Hard to name comparisons. There is simply nothing like this book. Funny, incisive, and upsetting, sometimes all within a few lines. Clearly well researched and meticulously laid out, but the poetic structure somehow makes the text MORE approachable. It’s a damn page-turner.

Revealing how this books ends feels like a spoiler, but suffice to say it will haunt me for a long time. As it should haunt every person in this country.

Truly something only a genius could make.

[Thomas Mackell · Rating 4 out of 5]

very funny, raw and real anti-poetry (which is the best kind) type shit. i say "type shit" because maybe this isn't really poetry so much as prose, who cares. i don't think graham irvin does, which is cool. he probably cares too much about other stuff that matters more. like love, guns, money, friends. Lawyers, Guns and Money. i bet he likes that song too. how could you not?

he mentions Salisbury and i hope he's talking about Maryland because that would make me like this more. the biking in Philly stuff makes me like it too. the part about biking down Spruce specifically, even tho i broke my ankle in a bike/trolley track related accident on Spruce a few years ago and it still hurts sometimes. also Schuylkill banks, mentioned near the end of the book and also where i sat and finished it. one of the songs i listened to on my bike home was Mach-Hommy's "No Blood No Sweat" in which he has a line that goes "oh word? your rap's braggadocious? put this .38 in ya mouth, go head and spit your magnum opus." The picture on the cover reminds me of the final shot of The Blair Witch Project. another Maryland reference? I choose to believe so. anyway, very fun book.

[Kirsti MacKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I HAVE A GUN is a feat. Over the course of eight sections, Irvin largely explores the gun as concept, as metaphor: gun as justice, gun as threat, gun as profit, gun as power, gun as bonding, gun as sidekick, gun as self-esteem, gun as literary device, gun as Biblical device, gun as PhD, gun as joke. It’s not a passive exercise; at each turn Irvin insists that this is a conversation in which we are active participants. He’s able to develop these metaphors because we’re so familiar with them. We’ve cultivated them together. We are complicit. If guns are a problem—in thought, in conversation, in reality—we are collectively responsible. For the phallic jokes, for the revenge fantasies, for the casual apathy. We all have a gun, and Irvin's book demonstrates that we're all a threat away from using it. Brilliant book. I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

[Devin Oilstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

A staring contest with an armed man. Graham Irvin doesn’t blink. His gun’s the power of his fixation, as formerly demonstrated in the also excellent Liver Mush. There’s an interesting throughline to be followed from that book’s ‘liver mush as totem of southern family heritage’ to this one’s ‘gun as totem of rural white identity’ that both grounds and gives authority to the work. No safe choices here. We’re better for the meditation. Made me cry.

[coldslaw 99 · Rating 5 out of 5]

insanely cool book. it's so much more than an exploration of masculinity, what being a guy is all about, how the penis doesn't go pow pow pow, etc. this is a collection that will literally teach you how to use a gun to make people love you. this is a work of art about being real and pulling the trigger. also, page 28 is really cool. I have a gun.

[Zac Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

a beautiful book. graham's brain works in a way i often feel awestruck by. he can make connections and turns that no one else can and the book glows with this one of a kind vision and execution. also, I enjoyed reading I Have a Gun and laughing and feeling uncomfortable and thinking about the gun in my heart and how someday I will use it to shoot and kill someone.

[Josh Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that is all 3 of these things: a gun, the finger on the trigger, and the person wielding it. A rare, spectacular obsession penned by Irvin shows many fallacies, metaphors, and lessons about guns. Original and genuine.

[Calvin Westra · Rating 5 out of 5]

gunned me down the way only the most gun books can. startlingly gun, gun-forward, not afraid to unholster its guns, gun confident. simply and truly, at its core, a gun book. a book about having a gun. a book full of guns, full of gun lore. a book that examines truly what it means to gun.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deep dive into the mind of a gun. A TED Talk on ammunition. A craft chat about bullets. What starts as an absurdist bit quickly becomes a devastating read. Like his last collection Liver Mush where every poem was about the regional food, every poem here is gun-based/gun-focused/gun-obsessed.

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

punchy and omnipresent, like a gun pressed against your teeth. this was absolutely exhilarating. i have no memory of how i stumbled across this book, but i am so glad to have it in my life. picked it up and devoured it in a single sitting.

[AutomaticSlim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still solid, but no liver mush. Not as funny, not nearly as funny, and I didn't care much for some of the prose sections. It's a good book though, and if you were thinking of trying it Irvin, I'd say go with mush

[D.T. Robbins · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's not a single sentence in this book that doesn't kick ass. Period.

[Kevin Kearney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art
must
be
real

poetry
must
be
real

the gun
must
be

a
real
ass
gun

bitch

[Matt Starr · Rating 5 out of 5]

i have a gun

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute brilliance. Graham has done an incredible thing here.

[Michael Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Goodreads review is a gun that shoots stars

[Anthony Verdi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relentless, funny, unflinching and unique. I both couldn’t put it down and needed to come up for air. You won’t read anything like it again this year.

[Jack Bullion · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Have a Gun? More like, I Had a FUN...time reading this funny, chilling book

[Tex Gresham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of poetry that reminds me to like poetry.

[Julian Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happiness is a warm book of poems and stories by Graham Irvin. Lots of skill on display here. Often fast-paced and funny, equally harrowing and dire.

[Alannah Guevara · Rating 5 out of 5]

now here's a book with style, grace, and conviction. whether or not you have a gun is irrelevant. all that matters is that author graham irvin has a gun and he's gonna tell you about it.

[David Catney · Rating 5 out of 5]

“sorry for calling you bitch

thank God you're still alive

please don't be intimidated”

[Eric Subpar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A G-D powerhouse from start to finish that deserves to be read and reread and reread.

[Codycvlp · Rating 4 out of 5]

simultaneously tongue in cheek and gritty, a quick read and perhaps another read down the line.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Have A Gun, do you?