EASY MATH
REVIEWS FOR EASY MATH
Coldfront Magazine
Easy Math is a dizzying and surreal journey that doesn’t offer simplistic answers to any of the questions it may or may not pose.
Harvard Review
Lauren Shapiro’s collection rides the newest wave of elegant confusion springing from the old New York School of modern verse, where verbal confusion purposely defies conventional reading.
The Rumpus
Such of course could be said about lots of books, but the big value in Easy Math that I can find is how it doesn’t quite solve, doesn’t quite offer anything as simple as closure.
Sundog Lit
Shapiro writes with admirable precision. She cuts out each letter like the author of a ransom note.
Winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize
Winner of the Debut-litzer Prize
Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award
Aesop stood on end, Shapiro’s poems tells wry fables that defy our instinct to find a moral to the story. “There are an infinite number of ways to torture the soul with hopefulness” she tells us, so instead we have ways to survive—crooked grins, twisted logic, and equations of jello shots, amusement parks, and post-it notes that never add up.
For a classroom-ready reader's guide written by the author herself, follow this link, and explore more titles with reader's guides in Sarabande in Education.
PRAISE FOR EASY MATH
“This fearless poet isn’t afraid to name something beautiful. And she’s not shy about how we humans have thoughts, opinions and feelings; she brings an astonishingly acute precision to bear on so many of our less than perfect ways. She registers our misapprehensions and turns our imaginations up several registers. I love reading this book, and getting to know this poet.”
“Lauren Shapiro writes a smart, funny, richly inhabited poetry of the here and now. May it soon be everywhere and always.”
“Lauren Shapiro can downshift from the sublime to the profane and back again in less than five seconds. She can glimpse the mystery of what we might call the big picture, and then narrow her eyes to the quotidian sorrows—this capacity holds a worldview that is radically crisp and compassionate. Energy and joy create these metaphors, and if they are in discourse with postmodern malaise, they almost win the argument.”
“Full of vim and vinegar, these poems push our faces into their marvelous bouquets. Constantly refreshed with alarming strangeness, Easy Math veers between irked humor and world-weary awe. Remember when we all got out of school for the fire alarm? This is even better.” ”