Wait 'Til You Have Real Problems

by Scott Beal

Wait ’Til You Have Real Problems, the fiercely imaginative debut collection from Scott Beal, tackles gender and childhood, passion and loss, in a series of thematically linked poems that will leave readers breathless. Beal finds inspiration in everything from fairytale to fatherhood, from a girl with barbed-wire hair to the origin of chicken noodle soup—but always, ultimately, from the core of the human.

136 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2014

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was trying to pinpoint what exactly made this collection so effective when I stumbled across a journal entry from when I’d read it the first time in which I referred to it as “a terrified, courageous set of poems.” I’d read the final poem, “Things to Think About,” four or five times before Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems was even published and it had never failed to give me shivers (still doesn’t), but in this context there’s a desperation to it that I hadn’t seen before. It’s this vulnerability, this willingness to give voice to fears that are not resolved by the final line that, I think, is the throughline of these poems.