Shifting Baseline Syndrome

by Aaron Kreuter

A satiric and searing collection of poetry obsessed with television, oceans, Jewish history, and time.



Nature isn't dying
it's simply revising
its target audience

In Shifting Baseline Syndrome, Aaron Kreuter asks the hard questions: will the Anthropocene have a laugh track? Is it okay to marry your eighteenth cousin? How different would the world look from outside the life-frame of the human? What is it like to have an acid trip in a portapotty? Is it the end . . . of Earth? Of capitalism? Of television?

Throughout Kreuter's sophomore collection, the TV remote is never far.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome is both searching and searing, veering between satire and sincerity, history and prophecy, and human and non-human worlds. As these clash ecstatically with loathing--and with the end looming--Kreuter demonstrates why we'll keep doing what we've always done: hoping, for once, that the series finale will be good.

Genres: Poetry

74 pages, Paperback

Published March 12, 2022

Reviews

[Farid · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll admit a lot of this went over my head. I probably missed over half the references. It was interesting to see mentions of Toronto and Ontario as I don't often read from local authors. This caught me off guard and ended up being the highlight of the book:

Rivers I

These times we live in, I'm telling you, it's not right. Just look at the internet. A young boy's first experience with a river used to be something special, something formative, something sweet and innocent. That first glimpse of curling blue through the trees. Getting down to the rocky shore, seeing the current for the first time. Throwing in a pebble, wading in, full of wanting to know what happens around the bend. The moment fresh water bursts into estuary. And now? Now within a minute of opening up a browser they can surf an infinite number of rivers, in all stages of flow! From an underground stream to a roaring headwater, these kids' minds are being perverted by the sheer infinitude of our waterways. How can we expect our young ones to have a healthy relationship to their river once they have been shown the unlimited possibilities that are just a click away! Not to mention, of course, the exploited rivers themselves. I'm telling you, these times we live in.

I got about halfway before figuring out he wasn't talking about rivers.

[Prav · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

my reaction to some poems was wow that's hardhitting and my reaction to other poems was wtf.

i really liked the one titled "black walnut" - it struck a chord in me but im not attuned with my feelings enough to know why.

[KileyV · Rating 3 out of 5]

"We're all television experts now. We know the expected beats like we used to know the seasons." Poetry about the anthropocene written by a guy who watches too much TV. Canadian nature poetry is getting edgy.

[MLA Chernoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

wtf what an incredible collection. if this doesn’t win the canadian jewish book award andor the griffin i will become the joker (again).

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my brother-in-law's work so I'm obviously biased but in this person-who-doesn't-usually-read-poetry's opinion you should read this book whether you read poetry or not!

[Jeffrey Greening · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent poems about popular culture, the environment, and family through a decidedly Canadian lens. Best line “Television is just another name for Anthropocene”

[Shawna Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aaron Kreuter addresses his take on shifting baseline syndrome in this cleverly written collection of poems. This is Kreuter’s second book of poems. His collection is broken into three sections Like Humidity, Just Another Name for Anthropocene and The Last River.

What is Shifting Baseline Syndrome?- One might wonder? It’s the ongoing environmental degradation on a local, regional, and global scale.

In such poems as Spoilers, Maps and South Florida Kreuter shows us that shifting baseline syndrome is increasingly recognized as one of the fundamental obstacles to addressing a wide range of today’s global environmental issues. Yet our understanding of this phenomenon remains incomplete. Kreuter has suggested that there are several self-reinforcing feedback loops that allow the consequences of Shifting Baseline Syndrome to further accelerate the progressive environmental degradation.

Such negative implications which are highlighted in this collection of poems show the urgent need to dedicate considerable effort to preventing and ultimately reversing Shifting Baseline Syndrome. This is made apparent in such poems as Eighteen Ways Of Looking At Magneto Destroying Auschwitz in X-Men: Apocalypse, Soaps, All We Care About Is The Series Finale But Series Finals Are Always Terrible So Why Do We Continue To Care You Know Why It Is Because We All So Badly Want Something To Believe In and Final(e) Thoughts.

In these three poems, Kreuter references pop culture in movies and on television. With these negative feelings, we are unable to keep our eyes off such shows and movies through casual viewing and binging. This psychological and sociological phenomenon can be termed shifting baseline syndrome.

This collection of poetry entertaining and definitely got the wheels turning in my head.

Bravo.