I really enjoyed this book of poetry. While most of it is good for a laugh, a couple of them really made me think about things, particularly the one about 9/11. It will make a nice gift for someone in need of a pick-me-up.

So Look Mom I'm a Poet (and So Is My Cat) is a quick and easy read (seriously, if you think this is a book of poetry that you'd rather dental work instead of reading, it's not that) and some of the poems will make you chuckle and others will make you roll your eyes so hard you can give yourself whiplash.There's a certain death and destruction theme that is hard to miss.

While I'll never get back the less than thirty minute reading time, no worries, I wasn't planning on doing anything with that thirty minutes anyway, so there you go.

Overall, a fun, eye rolling good time if you like that sort of thing. Oh and there's pictures too...

Fun and humorous. This was a quick read that I mostly enjoyed. I am not usually much of a poetry reader.

If you're looking for a poetry collection that is unique, vaguely dark, and moderately cynical... this one is for you! The poems are short and master brevity. They are a little mature in places, but I don't think that'll deter anyone from reaching for this clearly funny poetry collection. I think it's clear from reading that Andrew Shaffer knows his niche and even if that wasn't exactly *my* niche, I still got several laughs and think that this will be a great read for many.

Andrew Shaffer’s specialty is in writing titles if you couldn’t already tell from his book title.
He knows exactly how to get you on board with the seriousness of the poem then end it so anticlimactically that you can’t help but laugh and say, “oh I see what he did there”. He’s a breath of fresh air from all the seriousness in the world but he’s NOT the one to read if you’re looking for serious poetry. The book targets the people who share this specific sense of humor, but I don’t think it will appeal to everyone.

Personally, his humor isn’t my preference though I enjoyed reading it as a one-time read.

I had previously read and enjoyed "Hope Never Dies" by Shaffer, and so when I saw another book by him, I figured "sure this will probably be a good time". I bring this up specifically because with humor books so much hangs on whether or not you share the author's sense of humor. I thought I did.

So-called instagram poetry has plenty of people ready to make fun of it, and certainly there's a lot of terrible poetry that follows that style so as far as comedic material goes it's pretty easy pickings. A collection of tongue-in-cheek, satirical, irreverent poems could have been great. Unfortunately Shaffer doesn't have the sharp, rapier wit needed to pull that off. The poems come off more as shitposts that might garner double digit likes on twitter.

A few example poems for those interested:

Game Over: "Don't try to explain Fortnite to me. I don't care"

In These Challenging Times: "Together we'll get through this.* *Except those of us that die" (Which is <almost> tasteless enough to be funny but doesn't quite get there)

I judge humor books by a simple rule: did I laugh? I did not even smile. 1 star.

This collection of poetry definitely made me chuckle. I loved the mix of humor and poetry. These poems were so short that they felt kind of like goofy one-liners. The poems were not the next great poem by any means, but I found this to be entertaining.

I went into reading this with a super crazy open find and found it to be utterly lacking. Not because it was badly written, more because it is isn’t my brand of humor.

I am a fan of dry and intelligent wit, but a lot of the poetry just wasn’t for me. Don’t get me wrong, some of them had me in stitches. For example, Haters Gonna Hate- “I read the poems you wrote for me, she said, taking my hands in hers. Have you thought about seeing a therapist?” Pretty sure we have all had that thought a time or two about someone we know- maybe not their poetry, but still!

Check the book and see what the hype is about. While it wasn’t my cuppa tea, it really may be yours!

LOOK MOM I’M A POET (and so is my cat) (2021)
By Andrew Shaffer
Dime House Press, 146 pages.
★

The best thing about Andrew Shaffer’s chapbook is the cover. Seriously. It’s festooned with a (vaguely) Victorian man holding an opossum. It’s all downhill from there.

Let's start with the title. Shaffer is not a poet. There’s a difference between doggerel and a dog’s breakfast. These days everyone who puts words into a rap or fills a screen with unorthodox spacing fancies themselves the next Amanda Gordon or Billy Collins. That's utter nonsense. Gordon is the heir to Langston Hughes, who a century ago wrote of the dangers of a dream deferred. Her poetry moves with the grace and rhythm of music and challenges America to live up to its ideals. Shaffer’s PR machine cranks out comparisons to Collins, a risible analogy. Collins is a treasure because of his wondrous mix of humor and profundity. Collins makes you laugh, then cringe; he makes you want to suck the marrow from the smallest sublime moments because life is fleeting.

Snark is not the same thing as the depth. Shaffer is also billed as a humorist. Silly me, I thought that actual “humor” was a prerequisite for being a humorist. Shaffer’s is the look-over-the shoulder naughtiness that stops being funny about the time an adolescent boy graduates from junior high school. Consider these lines prompted by seeing a t-shirt that reads, “I Have a Pretty Granddaughter. I Also Have a Gun, a Shovel, and an Alibi.”

I thought about telling him
that I have a shovel, too,
and that I was going to dig up his backyard looking for his granddaughter, because what the fuck, dude.
What the fuck?”

Perhaps his words appeal to pop culture addicts who think that dropping a few memes and brand names confers cultural capital. In “I Read Your Chapbook” Shaffer writes,

Oh, look, just what the world needs –
another book from an Instagram poet
filled with more derivative tripe
about love, whiskey, and scars.

Lord Byron would have drunk wine
from your tattooed hipster skull
while riding his pet bear
into the House of Lords
before making sweet, sweet love
to his half-sister on the parliament floor.

Really makes you wonder, though:
When did he find the time to write?

It says it all to note this is his best work. As a poem it’s trite. It would, though, be a good standup routine.

In his (failed) efforts to write droll lines, Shaffer consistently goes for the cheap rather than transforming an inspired idea into a good poem. In “All Hands on Deck,” Shaffer discusses how numerous versifiers wrote submissions for The New Yorker after 9/11. He sets a melancholic tone that he ruins with: "Six months later, we received our rejections, our metaphors as unnecessary as another Ben Stiller movie…" This is the sort of line one utters at a party. Participants nod and give it the acknowledgment it deserves: "Good line dude.” Again, good standup material.

He does this throughout. In “Poetry Edgelord” he has an insightful moment in which he writes, “A poem is just a short story/without proper punctuation.” So why ruin it with childish references to Walt Shitman and William Turdsworth? Shaffer can’t even follow his own dictates. Later, he tries to pass off several children’s jokes about farts and witches as poems by arranging them as such. What do we wish to make of his observation after seeing the musical Hamilton: "If Alexander Hamilton was such bomb- ass rapper, why did he ever bother with politics?" I will give Shaffer credit for at least knowing that imagining a cloud as penis-shaped deserves the title “Stupid.”

He has several repeating themes–“#SponsoredPost,” “Great Kentuckians of Kentucky,” and recurrent references to the Pittsburgh Steelers–that are so lightweight one expects them to fly away. They are akin to his “Carpe DM.” The entire offering reads: “Every day is a new/opportunity to say/”Fuck it all.” Ditto his observation in “Goodnight Moon” in which he offers this offbeat/off-color observation: “One person’s nightmare of being naked in public is another’s wet dream.”

It’s ironic that Shaffer skewers hipsters; Shaffer seeks to be one. If you don’t already hate hipsters, you will by the time you finish reading his work. Tell you what. Go ahead and preemptively hate them. I’ve saved you the trouble of reading this. Try Amanda Gordon and Billy Collins instead.

Rob Weir

Andrew Shaffer made me laugh out loud with this book.Short, quick and fun read. I need to read it again. Jack Handey style but not a copy. Just makes you feel good. Thanks NetGalley!

Not sure if this is a 3.5 or a 4 for me. It's a very short read and, like most collected works of poetry, I really enjoyed some, found others (maybe the majority?) just sorta OK, and laughed out loud at a precious few. Honestly? Those are probably pretty good stats for ANY poet.

I will say that these poems have a very particular style of humor. If you don't spend very much time online or are an older generation, you might not get the gist of some (like the the #sponsoredpost ones).

Also, if you don't like your humor a little on the morbid side, you might find some in poor taste. Personally, I particularly dug the ones that turned dark on a dime, like...

"Not everyone who wanders
without direction
is lost.

Could be
they're just looking
for someplace to hide a body."

Yeah. That hits the spot.

Others just seemed a little bit like they were trying too hard or (more often the case) trying too LITTLE--like a cute idea or quip popped into his head one day and then became not the basis for, but the entirety of the text for, a poem. In other words, I wanted to see more meat on some of these.

But, you know, poems are personal. So it's hard to review and grade them. You may enjoy these. You may hate them. I guess I'll repeat that the book is veeeery short, so perhaps give it a whirl and see what you think?

I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I downloaded this on a whim, based solely on the absurd cover image.

I was.. underwhelmed. Some poems started well, but were twisted into "meh". Others appeared to require specific cultural context that eluded me.
There were a few amusing gems, but to me, the whole thing fell flat, as though the author was trying a bit too hard to be funny/quirky/edgy/snarky.

Not my sort of humour, but others may enjoy it.

*Many thanks to Netgalley for providing this book in exchange for an honest review"

This was really funny. A few didn’t really get me, most were funny enough, and some had me cracking up and reading them aloud to me spouse, so someone else could laugh with me. A quick read, that I’m glad I picked up!

ok, this was funny.

i actually smiled a few times, and i laughed out loud once. shout out to "the ballad of andrew garfield".

9/10, would read again.

also "peer pressure" had me shook. i did not expect THAT but that's what we got anyway.

What an off-the wall book of poems. It helps to see the ridiculous humor in these poems in order to enjoy them. Several are groaner poems, others are laugh out loud. If you enjoyed the old Saturday Night Live, this book is for you. There is the same "feel" to the poems.

The cat is adorable.

I picked up Shaffer’s poetry collection because I’ve been on a poetry kick recently and because I’ve read a couple of less-than-happy books recently and was looking for something funny. I did enjoy several of the poems in this collection, but for the most part they fell a bit flat for me. I think though, that’s less about the writing itself and more about my personal humor. While many of them were great one-offs, reading them altogether just didn’t work for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the free advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I do love a good poetry book - what I did enjoy about this one is that it was highly satirical in nature. Much different than the heart wrenching stuff I normal read. I enjoyed the humor, the laughter, the word choice and more. Definitely a nice change from the norm. PS my favorite poem in the book was titled "Shut Up Hippie"

This was a quick read and a ton of fun. I picked this up right before bed when my partner was trying to sleep and laughed so much he tried to push me off.

Thanks to the publishers for sharing this one. It really made me laugh. My full review appears on Weekend Notes.

Is this good? I have no idea. It gets 4 stars because of how hard it made me laugh out loud on a Wednesday night and how many people I wanted to share it with. I texted more people in one evening than I do all week. I was expecting to grin or chuckle, not die laughing.

Will you like it? I have no idea. But if you don't, your opinion of me and my opinions will take a sharp downturn.

One star taken away for the bits that didn't understand and because I can make arbitrary choices like that.

I read this book, with no idea what I was in for, courtesy of NetGalley.