Exit, pursued by a bear

by Joseph Mills

In his sixth collection of poems, Joseph Mills offer us a collection of witty and thought-provoking poems inspired by Shakespeare's stage directions. "You don't have to be a Shakespeare nut to fall in love with this collection," says Poet's Market editor Robert Lee Brewer, "but these poems are sure to cast a spell that won't be easily broken by man or beast . . . a wonderful piece of literature that should be studied along with Shakespeare's plays in English classes around the world."

Genres: Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

Published April 23, 2016

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Reviews

[Thomas J. Griffin]

Clever, light-hearted, and accessible. You could probably say this about any Mills collection, though. If you're looking for an entertaining contemporary poet who's not too self serious, start here.

[Alarie]

If you are a Shakespeare fan, like me, you probably recognize this book title as a stage direction from The Winter’s Tale. However, I admit I thought using a Shakespearean stage direction as the title and spark for EVERY poem in a book sounded deadly dull. I was wrong. Luckily, I heard Mills read from his book on You Tube at Poetry Hickory. He had me laughing in no time, so I went straight to Amazon and ordered this book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKvhI...

Mills models not his writing style, but his range, on Shakespeare. Many of the poems are very funny and use word play. For example, in “Enter Bottom,” he portrays Bottom and his friends as contemporary teen or young adult men who spend a lot of time drinking beer and imagine the great future they might have one day if they’d actually put some effort into it. It ends

“We just wanted something
to do, some kind of role,
any of them, all of them,
ones that meant something
if only to asses like us.”

Like Shakespeare, Mills also addresses the universal motives and feelings of humanity. At times he brings characters into the present. Even Shakespeare himself spends his “lost years” sightseeing in America, driving on Route 66. Sometimes he talks about the actors, rather than the characters, aspects of staging, or he imagines what would have happened if characters had had a different fate. Romeo and Juliet married young and in haste, without any deep soul searching or discussion. If they had lived, Mills says the regrets would have come later:

“The tragedy would have been the questions
that couldn’t be stabbed or poisoned or fled,
the ones they would have had to live with.”

One of my favorite poems is “Enter a Messenger with two heads and a hand,” in which the narrator, a messenger, tries to sell us on his profession as a fairly easy and lucrative way to make a living,

“but there is the occasional head,
which can be messy
because no one ever bothers
to box them up properly.”