Popular Longing

by Natalie Shapero

With deadpan humor, quick turns, and blunt logic, Natalie Shapero’s third collection moves nimbly between the lines of power structures—linguistic, personal, political— to expose the loneliness of our contemporary realities. Popular Longing takes on, among other topics, art markets, consumer desire, privatization, NIMBYism, passive aggression, sex, violence, and the mythology of California. Shapero moves from a whisper to a scream and back again, in the time it takes for the neighborhood dog to take a rat in its jaws and bite.

Genres: Poetry

65 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 2020

About the author

Natalie Shapero is a professor of the practice of poetry at Tufts University. Her most recent poetry collection is Hard Child (Copper Canyon, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Her previous collection, No Object (Saturnalia, 2013), received the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Natalie’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, and elsewhere, and she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and a Kenyon Review Fellowship.

Reviews

[el · Rating 3 out of 5]

natalie shapero has an incredibly sharp, incisive style, but unfortunately her work falls into a category of poetry i often have a tough time getting into (narrative, linear, barefaced, etc.), so i feel mostly lukewarm about this collection. favorites were probably "long wedding" and "ohio on tv" especially:

“How do they not know / it’s the same here as anywhere else: / the poverty is mundane, the wealth outrageous?”

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

i'm BACK again & no doubt about it. this was a NECESSARy reread as i feel I've got around the way with Hard Child to see it as a collection but I hadn't that with Popular Longing UNTIL NOW. y is death in everything lately. I think this is very delicate with it, whereas HC is about to whack u with the child/non-child from the get-go. PL is animated by the deaths of friends, their suicides, though you'd never know it from the skimmest of surfaces, which reads , as she does, almost jolly. She effervesces. & this collection is dominated by a long sonnet-y sequence running on the art-vandalism (not like the jso people, more so the people with guns and hammers). But it mutates, it appears at first to struggle with staying on topic. &&& I think me saying to myself NO think about this pushed it all over the edge into a breakthrough O I GET IT ,,, it all bleeds together. mwah




july:
i'm all here, there's no doubt to me that natalie is the most important poet to me! personally that I've read this year. she's the best she's a vocabulary to herself. (I stand by layli's best collection, these are different grounds) . .. I'm v excited for her new outspoken venture. a brain that needs studying

[Nicolas Duran · Rating 5 out of 5]

So damn funny, so damn anti capitalist and personal, so damn GOOD. Uses trite phrases in a way I’ve not seen anyone use (at least in a quality I’ve not seen). The sonnet section felt like it was a different kind of object, which I loved. Brilliant and good.

[Hans · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you find yourself in a situation where your friends move and start to remodel a farmhouse in the countryside of southeastern Washington and still have a lot more work before visitors can stay in the house on the farm, you probably will delay your visit until the local wine bar completes work on a few hotel rooms. When the hotel is finally ready and you take the trip, you'll probably discover that one of the owner/operators is passionate about poetry and is involved in an independent poetry publishing nonprofit and has stocked your well-appointed room with a stack of books from that press. You'll probably feel bad about reading your mass-market mystery in such a great space, so you'll sort through the stack and judging the books by the covers, select Popular Longing by Natalie Shapero.

You will devour poem after poem and read the whole volume in an incredibly short amount of time. You might even read one or two from the book at a secret poetry speakeasy/salon.

You'll enjoy all of those things and tell friends about the wine bar, hotel, Finnish chocolate, new Italian restaurant, and more.

But most importantly, you tell others to read Natalie Shapero's work.

[Janna Shaftan · Rating 4 out of 5]

You’re nothing in this town if you can’t monetize your own sins.

[Rowen H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The past is the same as anything else - we built it and now we can't kill it."

Not all of this resonated with me, but enough did that I would be hard-pressed to pick favorites from the collection. Possibly "Stoop" or "Tomatoes Ten Ways".

[Jessica O'Flanagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of my new favorite poetry collections - it’s biting and haunting, really masterful and a joy to read

[Rahul Kanakia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Effortless and emotional

I came across this book as an Amazon automatic recommendation after reading another volume of poetry, so was coming to Shapero’s work blind, but I have to say that I loved it. Her work is conversational without being mired in the contemporary, it’s rhythmic without a sense of effort or strain, it clearly comes from the heart, and I found the poems to be touching and meaningful. I’m not an academic critiquer, so I can’t speak too much to the formal virtues of the work (of which I am sure there are many), but as a reading experience it was very enjoyable.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Shapero is the kind of poet that manages to make really expertly crafted poems feel effortless. She's so good. The same edge of dark humor from her previous collection is still in effect here, though I think I may have appreciated that book ever so slightly more on the basis of a few really standout poems. It's not that these poems aren't as accomplished, they are, they're just a bit quieter if that makes sense. There's a matureness (sometimes world-weariness) to these poems. The same slow-simmering rage as before, but more controlled. Shapero is one of my favorite poets when it comes to writing about depression and suicide ideation (content warning for that, obviously).
I tell you what, Copper Canyon Press just does not miss.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 in all honesty. I'm not a poetry fan so that was part of it. another part of it was I read this in twenty minutes because I have to write two papers about two books today (this included) and I have read neither nor written any of the two papers. what did I say about this in the paper? a heap of nonsense I'm sure. one feels far away from the speaker. one can tell Shapero is a trained lawyer. one's unattachment to the speaker leaves one feels unattached to the entire collection. whatever I don't know. Shapero got a voice though, let her right fiction or cnf. ty

[Claire Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite poetry possesses sharpness, and this collection is sharp. Shapero cuts, she's precise in her evocation, she's jarring with description, and she turns smartly. Her poetry does all of this while still possessing a casualness and sense of humor; it's stunning. "I was wishing for a canny escape not only/ from what is around us, but also from what/ is pitiless and ambulant and tacky and can lodge/ one layer beneath the surface layer of our very/ skin."

[Mike]

I found Shapero’s poems in The Drift, and then sought out this collection. It is sharply observed and darkly funny and feels connected to the urgent question we all face in a society blanketed by information overload and smartphone-induced isolation and climate change and mass shootings—what exactly is the fucking point of being here?

[Dyson Kona · Rating 4 out of 5]

yay natalie shapero. great book; one of the best sequence's i've ever read in "don't spend it all in one place"
cool, smart, witty, funny, and mostly ingenious in how it calls upon art and the meta around art culture as means to explain human desire and greed. thuroughly enjoyed and learned lots.
"There's not enoguh money in the world"

[JM · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book full of blunt, depressing plain verse. Lots of strong imagery and there's clear talent at work, but the lack of nuance doesn't make me want to linger with any of these words. Some poems are like old friends, you want to come back and visit them again. These poems aren't like that. They are like baseball bats, or things with hard corners that fall on you when you open the closet door.

[S꩜phie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eileen baby I promise I'm coming back to you, but when I get books I've had on hold at the library I show no restraint!!!!

Trying to read at least one collection from each of my instructors from the KR winter workshop

[Susan L. L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Natalie Shapero's POPULAR LONGING (Copper Canyon Press) is a frank, deeply existential, humorous, and, at times, selt-deprecating collection about the troubling nature that characterizes our own awareness of experience, that is: how little we know, how much we understand. 10/10 recommend!

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shapero's new collection is incredible. The 'Don't Spend it All in One Place' series of poems are mind-blowingly good.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good job, Natalie!

[Ashley Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

The equivalent of having a snot running down your face sob session to find the relief hidden somewhere under your breast bone. Pure catharsis.

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems with an attitude! Some absolute gems in here - love "Don't Spend it All in One Place". Some funny snarky works about corporate world.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive collection of original poetry.

[Norah Leighton · Rating 2 out of 5]

not a huge fan but i am picky when it comes to poetry.

[Nicky Enriquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt like she was walking around Boston with me, muttering the sharpness of her wit under her breath.

[Maddelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are blunt little truthisms in 100% alignment with my sense of humor.

[Sara Shocks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites: "Lying is Getting," "California," "Magpie," "Green," "The Greatest Two minutes in Sports," "Don't Spend It All In One Place," and "Ohio on TV"

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

She's so lonely. The only direct relationship with the poet is to someone who assaulted her :(

[Amorak Huey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just one “holy shit this poem” poem after another.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

jfc this was so good. i am deceased. do we still say that? doesn’t matter, it’s how i feel.

[Ainsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

So strange and sad.. not a huge fan of poetry but this book helped me understand poetry more and how to read and analyze - also read this for class

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

"So sorry about the war- we just kind of
wanted to learn how to swear
in another language, and everyone knows
the top method is simply to open
fire and listen to what people yell."