JEROME SALA'S HOW MUCH? and DOUG LANG'S IN THE WORKS

Here's two books of poetry I highly recommend by two uniquely original wordsmiths (and, full disclosure, dear friends).

Sala has a PHD in American Studies but to me he's the genius philosopher of ethnic punk urban working-class poetry that employs the language of consumer culture and blue-and-white-collar workplaces to expose the most deceptive misdirections of advertising and exploitation and the deeper truths beneath them. And I don't mean to say his poetry is turgid but in fact the opposite, stripped down and sparkling with clarity. HOW MUCH? is a "New and Selected" collection of his classic hits from his earliest (1980s) to the present. Should be an essential part of any discerning reader's library.

As should the late Doug Lang's IN THE  WORKS. Doug was a self-taught immigrant from Wales novelist when I first encountered his work in the 1970s, but he became the master of innovative poetic technique and this book contains old and newer jewels from his language experiments, some more music than logic, some seemingly straightforward in meaning though resonant with more subtle meanings e.g. "This Poem" that states:

This poem doesn't like you

Doesn't like you at all and

Likes me

even less

Doesn't like other poems either and

Regards the whole literary world with pain and disdain

And the non-literary world likewise

or...

moreso

This poem despises itself above all

But takes some pleasure in its own pretentiousness,

superficiality and vanity

These are qualities that it appreciates

And most particularly it enjoys it's own miserable need for

attention