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How to be Good
David Banach’s deeply moving How to Be Good asks what we owe to one another, a question for which there will never be a clear answer. But you may feel, as I do, that the price of remaining human means asking the question again and again. Banach speaks from what seems to me the only honest platform—an acknowledgement of our own complicity. He knows that he—“one of those people who hates the sound of babies crying”—is capable of goodness for moments only. But this isn’t a book of the mind alone, or of mere ethics, which the speaker calls “a scam a whitewash…” It embraces, as we all must, hornets, anuses, piss, worms, police, McDonald’s, erections, guns, lynching, the town dump, braids in a little girl’s hair, and “O’Keefe flowers/of vulval lips.” From reading Augustine of Hippo decades ago, I remember the concept of a “highest and unchanging good.” To me, Banach has provided a description of “penetrating to the reality that/there is no separation where/there is love for love is the sight of/souls.” I don’t weep at cruelty, because I’ve come to expect cruelty. But goodness makes me weep, and I’m grateful to this book for the gift of tears.
—Patrick Donnelly, author of Willow Hammer, Little-Known Operas, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, and The Charge.
“What is goodness?” David Banach asks in his compelling new collection. The poems of How to Be Good journey through the political, the historical, and the personal, examining the theatrical masculinity of the town dump, nicknaming the inflatable figure in front of car dealerships the “Sisyphus of advertising,” and blasting anger like a broken jar of salsa. Banach recalls for us “all the difficulties of/loving in this wind-swept world where kindness/is lighter than air” through work that considers profanity and philosophy, theology and gender. How to Be Good rings with Whitman and Blake and declares empathy “an ache in places I never knew/I had places.” Banach is a rare poet of the pure heart, and his poems soothe like a balm for a contemporary age where heaven might require a two-factor authentication for entrance as a way of keeping out those who have ignored sunsets or kissed without passion. Pick up a copy of How to Be Good and let the soft strength of its healing begin.
—Jennifer Militello, Poet Laureate of New Hampshire
In this collection, David Banach reinaugurates that ancient union of poetry and philosophy. In thoughtful verse, he challenges us to hear the song of the world anew and to consider again the mysteries of its opaque complexity. The world has of course changed since the first philosopher-poets crafted their mythic dithyrambs. And so it is no longer to the muses that Banach turns for his inspiration, but McDonald's, inflatable flailing-arm tube men, over-crowded parking lots, and the town dump. What philosophical revelations lurk within such quotidian indecencies, you may ask? Only this, Banach humbly replies, "that this whole fucked up world is fucking beautiful" and that perhaps this is enough.
—Drew M. Dalton, Professor, Indiana University and author of The Matter of Evil
—Patrick Donnelly, author of Willow Hammer, Little-Known Operas, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, and The Charge.
“What is goodness?” David Banach asks in his compelling new collection. The poems of How to Be Good journey through the political, the historical, and the personal, examining the theatrical masculinity of the town dump, nicknaming the inflatable figure in front of car dealerships the “Sisyphus of advertising,” and blasting anger like a broken jar of salsa. Banach recalls for us “all the difficulties of/loving in this wind-swept world where kindness/is lighter than air” through work that considers profanity and philosophy, theology and gender. How to Be Good rings with Whitman and Blake and declares empathy “an ache in places I never knew/I had places.” Banach is a rare poet of the pure heart, and his poems soothe like a balm for a contemporary age where heaven might require a two-factor authentication for entrance as a way of keeping out those who have ignored sunsets or kissed without passion. Pick up a copy of How to Be Good and let the soft strength of its healing begin.
—Jennifer Militello, Poet Laureate of New Hampshire
In this collection, David Banach reinaugurates that ancient union of poetry and philosophy. In thoughtful verse, he challenges us to hear the song of the world anew and to consider again the mysteries of its opaque complexity. The world has of course changed since the first philosopher-poets crafted their mythic dithyrambs. And so it is no longer to the muses that Banach turns for his inspiration, but McDonald's, inflatable flailing-arm tube men, over-crowded parking lots, and the town dump. What philosophical revelations lurk within such quotidian indecencies, you may ask? Only this, Banach humbly replies, "that this whole fucked up world is fucking beautiful" and that perhaps this is enough.
—Drew M. Dalton, Professor, Indiana University and author of The Matter of Evil
Kindle Edition
Published October 20, 2025
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