Your Ten Favorite Words

by Reb Livingston

What used to be called "the war between the sexes" is now being duked out with great passion and finesse by Reb Livingston in this collection of take-no-prisoners poems. In Your Ten Favorite Words no one is let off the hook, least of all the feisty scribe herself. Sassy, freaky, comic, vulnerable, and to use her one of her very own neologisms, "gleefullized," Reb Livingston's poems are a shot in the arm and a throb in the brain, a rebellious erotics of language, an irrepressible manifesto of the vagaries of the libido, complete with deep mischievousness and dark misgivings. If you've been wondering where poems by the next generation of whip smart, tender/tough women can be found: Eureka! A book full of them is right here. --Amy Gerstler

Genres: Poetry

75 pages

First published October 23, 2007

About the author

Reb Livingston's books include Bombyonder , God Damsel , Your Ten Favorite Words , Pterodactyls Soar Again , The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (co-editor) and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - Second Floor (co-editor). She's the Misfit Documents Editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse and curates The Bibliomancy Oracle.

Reviews

[Paul Siegell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reb Livingston’s Your Ten Favorite Words is seductive. Turn to the first section and “Our Rascal Asses” greets you as its title. For me, that’s all the “come hither” I need. From the jump I encounter how lovers relate to each other, what ideas the act of sex leads to. There is a hook-up here, a girlfriend, and a wife. There is a spokeswoman for some kind of written love. And that spokeswoman, as a speaker, even talks to her own poems. “I’m trying to be funny,” she writes. “I’m using big words / and I don’t know what they mean.” (15) Tho she says, “Writing means / very little” (20), Reb’s poems mean very much. In control - aware of herself, her audience and the needs of both - Reb’s poems love.

Within this book, “There are / aches and they’re alarming and damp and unmentioned, I swear” (23) and “If you try to escape, / they will betroth you” (36). As I read along, interested to learn what's next, I kinda get the feeling like I’m hanging out with the cool girl in class, that spark and sass and smirk, and she’s letting me in on some exciting secrets. Take, for example, “My Lover Beside” (13):

O how he positions his palms
presses his thumb

above, almost historical
mouths the shoulders

clenched as crossword
puzzles, scribbled and clasped

He asks about quality,
its fuzzy whisper a hidden, hungry

thing
He gasps Something queer is going on

I nearly faint

Check out those line breaks, then combine that with when there’s punctuation and when there’s not. These are the choices that add to a poem. Besides the juicy scene that's described, to me, it makes for a very musical read, and one with mystery and layered meaning: What is going on here? Pages like these are why I enjoy poetry.

In another piece, another sweet choice: “it’s crisp and puts me sleep” (71). Puts me sleep. So fun to say and play with. By eliminating "to," the writer takes what could have been a rather mundane line and makes it more interesting. That's craft. “Mmm {Reb Livingston’s} thoughts melt nicely” (16).

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your Ten Favorite Words by Reb Livingston / Coconut Books / 978-0-6151-6182-2 / 75pps / $?

Reb Livingston knows how to have a good time and in this saucy collection of poems, she expounds on a few recollections with the same jazzy fun that probably caused them. I like her obvious enjoyment of words, how she teases them into a poem then has her way with them.
In the poem “Almost Took A Lover Once”, she boasts “(he was pleasing, so pleasing, he fissured my mind)”... And much the continuation of relating the relations goes on with perky lines that could easily stand alone, though why would they when they have so much fun when joined together with others?
In “What Doesn’t Do”, Reb asks “Am I the flesh that’s lost her way?” .. Not at all, darlin’, you’re leading it. Reminding me of Amy Winehouse she tells us in the poem “Still Feeling It” that she is “still feeling fucked up and fake”, which I can assuredly identify with, as well as most of her readers. These are nodders, been-there-felt-that poems that are going to make you smile is sweet memory. You may not as easily admit to them, but you are going to feel a little reminiscing going on. You’re going to remember “always panting for the again” as she confesses in “No Room at the Necropolis” and I think every woman has “placed faith in the talent of fingers” somewhere in their libidinous life, as Reb has in “Brevity Is Not My Soul”.
It’s always delightful to read women who have so much to give and enjoy giving it. There’s no shame there, nor should there be. Bravo, Reb Livingston. Bravo!

[Serena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reb Livingston's Your Ten Favorite Words is a collection of poems that examines the battle between the sexes in a new way, creating caricatures of men and women. Livingston has a way with imagery, alliteration, and riddles. A number of poems roll into a rhythm, twist the tongue, and require readers to assess each line carefully.

The collection is broken down into three parts: Our Rascal Asses; Unsweet and Looking for a Fix; Burgers and Pitchforks. Readers are introduced to three caricatures Smitten Girl, The Man With the Pretty Chin, and The Heart Specter. And each section begins with a mini-conversation or set of statements between the characters. These set up each section, allowing them to unfold.

"The Smitten Girl [to The Man with the Pretty Chin:]: Will you be using your charm for good or injury?

The Heart Specter [murmuring:]: (C)harm for G(o)od!" (Page 8 )

For more of my review, visit http://savvyverseandwit.com

[Jeannine]

(I usually dislike it when male critics use words like "saucy" to describe a woman's book of poetry, but nonetheless:)
Rebecca Livingston's collection (from Coconut Books) of flirtatious, saucy, edgy-with-a-LangPo-twist poems provides portraits of an American woman coming to terms with her country, her lovers, her culture, and yes, her words and herself. Read to entertain yourself, to take a look inside Livingston's fun-house mirror, reflections of the tawdry and tender.
An excerpt from one of my favorite poems in the book, "Wifely Attempt at a Poem:"
"His poems only poemified my thighs and didn't
mention I was trying to be a choice wife
while fists floundered, tongues clamped...
There was a poetry reading held in a boneyard that
onlookers mistook for a peep show
It should have been obvious
The aggrieved circled, fingered
my thoughtful frocks of fraught..."

[Rauan · Rating 5 out of 5]

sharp tongued and delicious.

[Reb · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's my book and I'll give it 5 stars if I want to.

[Seth Abramson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read.