Ha Ha Ha Thump

by Amorak Huey

You don’t need to count how many times variations on “disappear” and “disguise” appear here to get the sense that Amorak Huey is not only a witty and keen-eyed poet but also a consummate magician, directing our gaze to one thing even as he prepares to show us something better. Thus one poem declares in its title that it is about wallpaper, not breasts. In another, the pope imagines himself a married man, and if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. Like a 21st -century “Abracadabra!” the phrase “ha ha ha thump” serves as the title of this collection and then recurs as a poem title not once but five times, cracking the ordinary world open to reveal the wonders within. — David Kirby

Chapter by chapter, night by night, Amorak Huey’s Ha Ha Ha Thump creates a mash up of domestic life and celebrity culture—the beautiful monotony of marriage to a super model, heroic personas professing to their beloveds, a rock star’s immortal prowess shows signs of aging. These poems are insightful and funny, but best of all they are jubilant about all our small human failings adding up to love. The tongue may be hostage to memory, we may “replicate our favorite mistakes,” we may fail to make love in our parents’ hot tub, but what rises in each manifestation of these love stories is the persistence of possibility in all its bright pulsing urgency. — Traci Brimhall

“The problem,” Amorak Huey writes, “isn’t feeling nothing, it’s feeling everything.” Ha Ha Ha Thump is a book that feels everything, and the feeling it reaches for most is love (in each of its delighted and damaged forms). This is a tremendous book with a spectacular heart, and at the center of that heart you'll find love. I mean, first you'll find vampires, bank robbers, reality TV shows, tiny robots and a steady, enduring sadness, but then—in the middle of all that—you'll find love. — Matthew Olzmann

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2015

Reviews

[Selina Tropiano · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book as part of a Goodreads Giveaway. I liked the first half better than the second half. Since it is a book of poetry, that leaves a lot of room for change in preference from page to page. Some of the poetry was difficult for me to relate to, yes, but there were other poems that were great. My favorite in the book was The Poet and the Supermodel.

Honestly, it'd be worth the read just for the titles of the poems. "Self Portrait as a Vampire Trying to Read Twilight on a Cross-Country Flight," for instance, caught my attention pretty much instantly.

[Brandon Amico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Packed with music, humor, insight, and lush imagery, the underlying current that propels this book is the speakers' wonderment at the absurdity of the everyday. Huey shows readers alternatingly outlandish and banal situations, and the human looking for meaning within each. Inventive, genuinely emotional, and most importantly, a blast to read.

[Jessica Homeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will probably re-read this several times.

[Timons Esaias]

I picked this up on the recommendation of the publisher (at the Frostburg Indie Lit Fest), and enjoyed the product. Huey has some of the wittiest section titles and poem titles I've seen. Wittier, pound-per-pound than any I've seen in quite a while: "Looking for Love on All the Wrong Reality Shows" "Self-Portrait as a Vampire Trying To Read Twilight on a Cross-Country Flight" "Love Poem Totally About Wallpaper and Not at All About Something Else, Like Breasts" "Nocturne in Which We Fail Yet Again to Have Sex in Your Parents' Hot Tub" "Last Two Speakers of Dying Language Refuse to Talk to Each Other" and the final poem in the collection, "Ars Poetica Disguised as a Love Poem Disguised as a Commemoration of the 166th Anniversary of the Rescue of the Donner Party."

The collection includes both prose poems and free verse pieces. The title poem recurs at the beginning of each of the five sections. Or a poem of that title does. The style of these poems make them seem like chapters or sections of a long poem, mostly in two-line stanzas, sometimes ending in a one-line stanza, and describing a trip. Interesting structural device.

I admired the experimental nature and amusing wit of this book. I recognize some of my own tendencies in here, so it has to be wonderful, no?

My three favorites were the final poem, the poem that isn't about breasts, and "Sex Lives of Certain Invertebrates."

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a very good collection of poetry from Amorak Huey, one of my favorite poets.

from The Poet & the Supermodel (A Rearranged Marriage): "Relationships are anagrams of other relationships, / a poem resembles what was written before-"

from The Journalist in Love: "Asking questions is the easy part. / There's the job and there's the burying, / deep below the red dirt of your childhood. / ... / ..language fails and all you have left / is the desperation you were born with. / Her name. The echo. The ranting sky. The echo."

from Ha Ha Ha Thump (one of the many poems with this title in the collection): "clouds / dark as anvils unzip and singe the sky / of our marriage. This road trip / is nocturne, love poem, self-portrait, / rescue mission, last chance- / what if it's the storm sustaining us?"

Do yourself a favor and pick up this book. It's a wonderful read.