The Hate Poems

by John Tottenham

John Tottenham writes poetry. But don't hold that against him. It's the kind of poetry that is accessible to people who don't read poetry, i.e. everybody. This new collection, 'The Hate Poems', presents a further elaboration on the themes addressed in his two earlier volumes - 'The Inertia Variations' and 'Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment'. In elegantly-wrought laments of self-deprecation and hateful love poems, the author finds that he has more to say on already exhausted subjects, and gives voice to the kind of thoughts most people prefer not to express but will automatically relate to and be entertained by. Poets are doomed, among other fates, to repeating themselves. Another potential fate is to be consigned to a world of embittered obscurity, and this is the world that Tottenham restlessly inhabits and relentlessly explores. He has staked out a singular terrain where egotism and self-loathing meet, where futility merges with urgency, and beauty is created out of bitterness. He furnishes mesmerizing proof that a poet maudit can still, if not thrive, at least survive, alive and unwell, in this benighted age, and that the dregs can sometimes be the cream.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2018

Reviews

[Will]

Like Pessoa in LA, but with more spleen

“To give up at last / What a relief”

[Colin]

Slightly irritating in its repetitive pounding in the misanthropy button.

[Nikolai Garcia]

I loved the first 15 pages of this but then it got kind of repetitive and I felt like I was reading the same poem over and over again. I do think the cover art and title are genius and I relate to this author's mood so I would definitely check out his other work.

[Michael Legge]

Shame he dies in the end.

[John Thomas Allen 2nd]

These poems are hilarious, and have the metallic ring of a comedian who has had it up to here. If Peter Boyle or Rodney Dangerfield got a load on, were fired from their acting jobs and a sudden talent for poetry, this would be it.

STAGNATION PARTY

You watch other people losing it
and you wonder if it couold happen to you.
You swagger in vain
against extinction. But the efforts of those
who wrest crumbs from history won't be enough to
ensure your immortality.
You might have done more
had others done less, had you not been thwarted by
the unsightly spectacle of other people's success.
You were guilty of the conceit of the refusal
to compete, good enough not to have to prove it,
and you resent those who wisely used
the time and opportunities you abused.
But at least you failed deliberately,
or so you insist.
You watch other people lose it
and you wonder if it can happen to you.
It can.
Maybe it already has.

Wry is the word here. Wry, and to backtrack a bit, jaded. But in a way that has honor.

BURNT OUT ON THE SUN

Gazing up at the hills, at the sunlight
dashing through the palm trees, reality blurs
And I wonder what became of the last twenty years--
in this town of tits and teeth
of slow power and soft atmosphere.

Is it better to dry up in the land of dreams
or dream in the land of the dried-up?
to change grim realityfeckless heliolatry
as soothing, beguiling and insidious softness?

There is safety in numbness,
in so denatured a locality,so far removed
locality and historyAnd I'm deeply grateful
to be stuck here sinking in geographical and cultural isolation,
seldom jolted out of numbness
in this seductively deadening place,
both sanctuary and terimination.

These poems arise from deep frustration and a sense of rugged authenticity. Hilarious.

[sry_fully_booked run by QM]

Excerpt from Death in the Hills:

Cast further adrift by this subtle urgency,
I can feel my precious life ebbing away.
Better to be a recluse than a loose wreck,
a small fish in a pond instead of lost at sea.

[Anonymous]

False advertising. They claimed this book delivered "near-orgasmic wit" but, I didn't even get close.