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toniclark's review
3.0
Odd. I was sure there would be a poem for each letter of the alphabet!
This book didn't work for me, though I found the overall concept pretty interesting. I admit I've been resistant to a lot of prose poetry. Sometimes a sentence or image grabbed me, but in general, I felt impatience. I most liked "The Arrested Atheist." I was irritated as heck by "The Scholastic Atheist." There seemed to be a lot of misconceptions about what an atheist might do or think and I couldn't tell whether they were tongue-in-cheek. What is the point? The last one ("The X-Rated Atheist") suggests that the author is sympathetic to the maligning of atheists by much of contemporary culture. I guess the point is that there are all kinds of atheists, just as there are all kinds of Christians, Muslims, dog-lovers, poets, professors, mechanics, sports fans, etc. (Okay, maybe it deserves a second look.)
This sentence bothered me: "The kevlar atheist believes he is ten foot tall and bullet proof."
Kevlar hasn't become genericized, has it? Perhaps it's on its way, like the refrigerator and the escalator. And the zipper!
And why isn't the fellow ten feet tall? (Though I can well accept a ten-foot-tall atheist.) And bulletproof?
I do like: "His shoulders ache in exactly the spot an angel would grow its wings."
This book didn't work for me, though I found the overall concept pretty interesting. I admit I've been resistant to a lot of prose poetry. Sometimes a sentence or image grabbed me, but in general, I felt impatience. I most liked "The Arrested Atheist." I was irritated as heck by "The Scholastic Atheist." There seemed to be a lot of misconceptions about what an atheist might do or think and I couldn't tell whether they were tongue-in-cheek. What is the point? The last one ("The X-Rated Atheist") suggests that the author is sympathetic to the maligning of atheists by much of contemporary culture. I guess the point is that there are all kinds of atheists, just as there are all kinds of Christians, Muslims, dog-lovers, poets, professors, mechanics, sports fans, etc. (Okay, maybe it deserves a second look.)
This sentence bothered me: "The kevlar atheist believes he is ten foot tall and bullet proof."
Kevlar hasn't become genericized, has it? Perhaps it's on its way, like the refrigerator and the escalator. And the zipper!
And why isn't the fellow ten feet tall? (Though I can well accept a ten-foot-tall atheist.) And bulletproof?
I do like: "His shoulders ache in exactly the spot an angel would grow its wings."
sloatsj's review
I liked the concept, topic and structure of this. Some of it was very amusing. Being an atheist myself, I identified most with theVirginal Atheist, who thinks it’s all or nothing. I used to be like that on the flip side, back when I was trying to convince myself I believed in god. I thought the Virginal Atheist worked very well, showing a kind of internal, moralistic control freak. The last image is terrific, with him spitting out the word ‘atheist,’ and its looking like a pearl, and his not being in the least surprised.
Most of these start out with the same, simple structure, which could be likened to a child’s alphabet book:
The virginal atheist thinks that belief should remain untouched…
The quietest atheist is actually an oak tree…
The token athesist has a grudge…
The child atheist grew up in Berkeley, CA….
The gentlemen atheist dates a Christian…
I enjoyed some of the observations here, like “the token atheist has a grudge against god, which means that god exists and the atheist is already wrong.” I also enjoyed the creativity: “The kevlar atheist believes he is ten foot tall and bullet proof.”
Some of it seemed less successful. The token athesist, for example, whom you’d expect to be kind of blasé, becomes a nihilistic atheist and then falls in love and goes to church with his lover, finally believing “God is love.” I had a couple arguments with that. In my mind a token atheist doesn’t have to go through transformations; he just has to doubt, look at the usual arguments for and against the existence of god, and come out on the downside. (But, hey, arguing is fun and thinking is the upside of reading.)
Considering at least two of us have read this book since Nina pointed out it can be downloaded, I can only laud the idea of FREE ebooks as an effective strategy of getting your poetry read.
Elsewhere, the perennial grammatical peeve unfortunately appears in this chapbook, the dreaded lay vs. lie problem:
“… he suspects under that brittle veneer of piety lays a powerful atheist.”
And “they lay in bed … one whispers into the other’s ear…”
Now if that second one had been past tense it would have been grammatically correct. Bloop!
It does annoy me when people get lie and lay wrong. One can forgive the layman (no pun intended), or Eric Clapton, but writers who supposedly care about language should take better care.
Most of these start out with the same, simple structure, which could be likened to a child’s alphabet book:
The virginal atheist thinks that belief should remain untouched…
The quietest atheist is actually an oak tree…
The token athesist has a grudge…
The child atheist grew up in Berkeley, CA….
The gentlemen atheist dates a Christian…
I enjoyed some of the observations here, like “the token atheist has a grudge against god, which means that god exists and the atheist is already wrong.” I also enjoyed the creativity: “The kevlar atheist believes he is ten foot tall and bullet proof.”
Some of it seemed less successful. The token athesist, for example, whom you’d expect to be kind of blasé, becomes a nihilistic atheist and then falls in love and goes to church with his lover, finally believing “God is love.” I had a couple arguments with that. In my mind a token atheist doesn’t have to go through transformations; he just has to doubt, look at the usual arguments for and against the existence of god, and come out on the downside. (But, hey, arguing is fun and thinking is the upside of reading.)
Considering at least two of us have read this book since Nina pointed out it can be downloaded, I can only laud the idea of FREE ebooks as an effective strategy of getting your poetry read.
Elsewhere, the perennial grammatical peeve unfortunately appears in this chapbook, the dreaded lay vs. lie problem:
“… he suspects under that brittle veneer of piety lays a powerful atheist.”
And “they lay in bed … one whispers into the other’s ear…”
Now if that second one had been past tense it would have been grammatically correct. Bloop!
It does annoy me when people get lie and lay wrong. One can forgive the layman (no pun intended), or Eric Clapton, but writers who supposedly care about language should take better care.
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