Soft Launch: Poems

by Aaron Belz

With fluster, bluster, and, occasionally, mustard, Aaron Belz absurdly goes where many middle-aged white men have gone before, but probably never written poems about with such insight and pomp. In Soft Launch , Aaron Belz takes what might seem normal to other people―a 1/3 full bottle of Prell left in a musty shower stall of a mountain cabin, for instance―and turns it over in the light until its true self emerges, a thirsty dolphin lost in the piney woods. Or so he claims. Regardless, in these poems, the sentimentalized experience of middle-age is about not just connectedness but overconnectedness , and to all the wrong things. Hyperaware, hypervigilant, and abundantly alert, Belz surveys the banal, the grinding quotidian, and asks not, “Is this all?” but rather “Isn’t this not all?” And then he bows his head either to pray or to nap.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 17, 2019

About the author

Aaron Belz has won basically every writing award there is. If you know of a writing award he hasn't won, please notify your mom.

Reviews

[Aaron Belz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seems pretty good. No real qualms.

[Brian]

Need to read again before rating.

[Sparrow .]

Aaron cheats at poker – and wins!

Opening at random:

How hard it is to be separated
from the one you love;
how much harder to be separated
limb from limb by an orangutan.

[”Valentine’s Day Poem,” in its entirety.]

[Brett Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Belz' humor, especially his "love" poems.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whimsy, absurd, terrifyingly relatable