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Crushing It
The poems in Jennifer L. Knox’s darkly imaginative collection, Crushing It , unearth epiphanies in an unbounded landscape of forms, voices and subjects―from history to true crime to epidemiology―while exploring our tenuous connections and disconnections. From Merle Haggard lifting his head from a pile of cocaine to absurdist romps through an apocalypse where mushrooms learn to sing, this versatile collection is brimming with dark humor and bright surprise. Alongside Knox’s distinctive surrealism, Crushing It also reveals autobiography in poems about love, family, and adult ADHD, and Knox’s empathetic depictions of the ego’s need to assert its precious, singular “I” suggest that a self distinct from the hive, the herd, the flock, is an illusion. With clear-eyed spirit, Crushing It swallows all the world, and then some.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2020
3 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer L. Knox
16 books28 followersJennifer L. Knox was born in Lancaster, California—home to Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Space Shuttle. Her other books of poems, Drunk by Noon and A Gringo Like Me, are also available through Bloof. A volume of her verse in German, Wir Fürchten Uns, is available through Lux Books. Her poems have appeared in three volumes of the Best American Poetry series, Best American Erotic Poems, Great American Prose Poems: From Poet to Present, and Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 17, 2020
Guinea Pigs
are Andean rodents that were originally
domesticated as food, then imported
to Europe as pets for rich people.
Queen Elizabeth I had a pet guinea pig.
The oldest guinea pig skeleton in England
dates back to 1575. Imagine: guinea pigs
traveling all that way on dark, dank boats
riddled with rot, stench, lice, rats,
and scurvy, King of Nutritional Deficiencies,
which would out-kill more people
than any other nutritional deficiency
by abating the one thing connecting
everything in our bodes: collagen, a Greek word
derived from the practice of boiling
down horse parts for glue. Guinea pigs
were eventually used as guinea pigs
in early experiments on scurvy, which moved
through them and broke them down much
the same way it did us. It was about time. The rats
we'd been using in the labs--something
about their fleas, which seemingly knew no
bounds--had started to give us the willies. (46)
Full House
We’ll never know the Tanners any better than we do
after the show’s 42-second intro, when the girls come
dancing over a green San Francisco hill, laughing at a joke
we missed. A happy man strums a guitar but we can’t hear
his song because the intro’s drowning him out (maybe
he’s just moving his lips). Another man touches his car,
stares at the camera and smiles. That’s all we’ll ever know!
Which means we know the Tanners better than the real
people we love who are silently jettisoning thoughts and
parts of themselves that no longer benefit them, like a snake
sheds dead skin. Sometimes, that skin is us and they don’t
know they’re changing, but we do, even without words.
The Tanners are like mushrooms: born with every molecule
they’ll ever need. No matter how much it rains, they’ll soak
it up. Only the singer of their theme song will change. (48)
are Andean rodents that were originally
domesticated as food, then imported
to Europe as pets for rich people.
Queen Elizabeth I had a pet guinea pig.
The oldest guinea pig skeleton in England
dates back to 1575. Imagine: guinea pigs
traveling all that way on dark, dank boats
riddled with rot, stench, lice, rats,
and scurvy, King of Nutritional Deficiencies,
which would out-kill more people
than any other nutritional deficiency
by abating the one thing connecting
everything in our bodes: collagen, a Greek word
derived from the practice of boiling
down horse parts for glue. Guinea pigs
were eventually used as guinea pigs
in early experiments on scurvy, which moved
through them and broke them down much
the same way it did us. It was about time. The rats
we'd been using in the labs--something
about their fleas, which seemingly knew no
bounds--had started to give us the willies. (46)
Full House
We’ll never know the Tanners any better than we do
after the show’s 42-second intro, when the girls come
dancing over a green San Francisco hill, laughing at a joke
we missed. A happy man strums a guitar but we can’t hear
his song because the intro’s drowning him out (maybe
he’s just moving his lips). Another man touches his car,
stares at the camera and smiles. That’s all we’ll ever know!
Which means we know the Tanners better than the real
people we love who are silently jettisoning thoughts and
parts of themselves that no longer benefit them, like a snake
sheds dead skin. Sometimes, that skin is us and they don’t
know they’re changing, but we do, even without words.
The Tanners are like mushrooms: born with every molecule
they’ll ever need. No matter how much it rains, they’ll soak
it up. Only the singer of their theme song will change. (48)
June 1, 2021
When it comes to my love of JLK, I say the weirder the better. I wondered if her leap to the esteemed and dignified Copper Canyon Press would blunt her sharp wit and overflowing weirdness, but I was wrong. This collection includes a couple of new poems for the inevitable Greatest Hits collection (Monochrome Rainbows, How to Manage Your Adult ADHD, Pretty, The Intellectuals of Mongolia and Their Influence on Modern Art). There are plenty of times where the poems veer into randomness and sometimes gleefully fly over my exploded head, but that's part of the charm. I might have been puzzled at times, but I wasn't ever bored, and there was a smile plastered on my face like an idiot.
May 11, 2022
This was a very interesting read and one I'm glad to have taken on.
The first section of this book is amazing. Knox is perfectly blunt and her poems are easy enough to pick apart while conveying extremely visceral emotions through simple language.
The second section on the other hand...really rough. I found myself laughing after each poem for all the wrong reasons. She loses all coherence and her poems are utterly indecipherable (in addition to being uninteresting: you will have absolutely no desire to decipher them).
Takeaway: read the first half, flip to "The Intellectuals of Mongolia and Their Influence on Modern Art," laugh your ass off, and be done.
The first section of this book is amazing. Knox is perfectly blunt and her poems are easy enough to pick apart while conveying extremely visceral emotions through simple language.
The second section on the other hand...really rough. I found myself laughing after each poem for all the wrong reasons. She loses all coherence and her poems are utterly indecipherable (in addition to being uninteresting: you will have absolutely no desire to decipher them).
Takeaway: read the first half, flip to "The Intellectuals of Mongolia and Their Influence on Modern Art," laugh your ass off, and be done.
January 9, 2021
Some of these poems are incomprehensible. The narratives lose their way and just don’t cohere into anything sensible.
Fan of her first two books which were intelligent and comical and gritty.
I had the new experience of groaning a lot after finishing some of these poems. As in, jesus that was terrible, please give me the perseverance to finish this damn book.
The guinea pig poem worked great. If you want to just check that out. There were about two or three others that were worthwhile.
Skippable. And I just purchased ‘Gringo Like Me’ for a friend so I am bummed that this wasn’t better because I enjoy her previous work.
Fan of her first two books which were intelligent and comical and gritty.
I had the new experience of groaning a lot after finishing some of these poems. As in, jesus that was terrible, please give me the perseverance to finish this damn book.
The guinea pig poem worked great. If you want to just check that out. There were about two or three others that were worthwhile.
Skippable. And I just purchased ‘Gringo Like Me’ for a friend so I am bummed that this wasn’t better because I enjoy her previous work.
October 28, 2020
You’ve read poetry. You’ve read humor. You’ve read funny poetry. But this is such a specific and nuanced funny poetry. And it’s not all funny. What I’ll say is this: one poem apparently about extinction ends with a winky-face emoticon.
Dog ears abound in my copy!!!
Dog ears abound in my copy!!!
March 2, 2021
A wide range of subjects from animal studies to historical analysis and Knox is comfortable depicting the chaos around her.
June 1, 2021
My review for Whale Road Review: http://www.whaleroadreview.com/jennif...
August 21, 2021
Very weird. Also, the poem about putting the dog down made me cry and I am not here for it. I wasn't warned that any dogs were dying. :_( >:(
August 26, 2021
Interesting narrative poetry...
September 18, 2022
!! [Yikes!] The titles stretching almost as long as the poems. "Do you know what I mean by brash?" Seductive and--yes--startling. Jumpy (so ADHD. So OD).
did-not-finish
February 21, 2023Tried 10 poems. Didn't connect to any of them, so DNFed.
March 17, 2023
So-so. Not a fan.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews