I had a hard time getting Marcus’ latest book here in Yangzhou. Hahaha! Can you believe that’s a sentence I just wrote? Such subversive poems are banned in Middle Kingdom, I guess. What I really want to do is take this back to when Marcus was working at Parking Services, and tell him this will be our destiny. But of course that’s not a thing, you can’t go back in time and tell someone working their awful job and hating every minute, you’re going to make it. You’re really going to do it. Someday I will be reading your book, and it’s going to be beautiful.
The introduction to his work begins: What are we to do with anger? What are we to do with love? What are we to do with one another, given all that happens and has happened between us? And, seriously, what are we to do with it all? And isn’t that basically what good poetry forces us to question?
This is an amazing collection, and you should read it. Maybe not alone in China, since a foreign woman crying over her Kindle attracts a certain amount of attention.
