{"id":14234,"date":"2020-02-06T14:39:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T19:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=14234"},"modified":"2024-12-03T12:20:23","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T17:20:23","slug":"mesmerizingly-sadly-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/mesmerizingly-sadly-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″]\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

paper \u2022 78 pages \u2022 16.95
\nISBN-13: 978-1-945588-48-8<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a><\/p>\n

Watch the Book Trailer<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful<\/em><\/h1>\n

Matthew Lippman<\/h2>\n

Winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry<\/h5>\n
Longlisted for the Mass Book Award in Poetry <\/a><\/h5>\n
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This is the \u201cAge of the Bullet,\u201d Matthew Lippman writes in Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful<\/em>, days in which \u201cbullets sprout other bullets in the bullet garden\u201d and a caricature of a onesie-wearing president sucking
\non a pacifier appears on the cover of a national magazine. Lippman\u2019s poems are wildly inventive yet grounded in the 21st century dailyness of parenting and dinner parties and Dunkin Donuts, all of which serve as launch pads into perennial questions of mercy and trust. \u201cI don\u2019t care what you say about this city,\u201d Lippman writes in the title poem whose images recall New York City in the days following 9\/11: \u201cWe sit down together on the sidewalk \/ and we hold one another.\u201d These are brash, beautiful poems, big-hearted in their tilt toward sentimentality and their yearning for something more, something better.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If You Don\u2019t Want Your Kids To Have Sex Don\u2019t Finish The Basement <\/strong><\/p>\n

This guy Lev, at the dinner party said,
\nIf you don\u2019t want your kids to have sex don\u2019t finish the basement.
\n<\/span><\/em>I don\u2019t remember anything anymore, my 52 year old brain a soggy piece of kale,
\nbut I remembered what Lev said.
\n<\/span>It\u2019s because Lev is the heart in levov
\nwhere all the stories come from.
\nHere\u2019s the story: we were eating the salmon and he was talking about his kids,
\nall grown up,
\nand my kids were in the basement playing ping pong,
\nnot yet 13.
\nThere was beer and wine and gluten free challah and gluten free Tiramisu
\nand the walls were red and gluten free.
\nThat\u2019s the whole story.
\nThe other story is that when a guy says something like that
\nyou have to remember where you were when you first had sex.
\nIt could have been in a car, in an attic, between two trees, under the moon,
\nnear the factory, inside the deep blue sea, in the onion patch.
\nSex is an onion.
\nIt\u2019s translucent and sweet and will make you cry your face off.
\nIt\u2019s a swimming pool on fire and a gorilla who knows how to speak 7 languages.
\nIf you are lucky enough to have sex in a finished basement,
\nthis is a good thing.
\nIf you have sex in an unfinished basement, not so good\u2014all that dust,
\nthose exposed water heaters, boilers, and rusted rakes.
\nSo when Lev said,
\nIf you don\u2019t want your kids to have sex don\u2019t finish the basement,<\/em>
\nI took a bite of my salmon and here\u2019s the last part of the story.
\nMy kids are going to grow up and have sex.
\nA sad and wide-eyed, ecstatic sex, if they\u2019re lucky,
\nand so I left the table in the dark, middle of winter to finish the basement\u2014
\nbuy some rugs, some cheap pillows, and a jukebox,
\none of those old school Wurlitzer\u2019s with the automatic eye.
\nFill it up with all the songs that make your heart burst<\/em>, I will tell them.
\nPlay your music<\/em>
\ntil the needle runs those records bare bone beauty and glisten.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\nAbout the Author<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 78 pages \u2022 16.95 ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-48-8 Add to Cart Watch the Book Trailer [\/column] [column col=”3\/4″] Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful Matthew Lippman Winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry Longlisted for the Mass Book Award in Poetry  This is the \u201cAge of the Bullet,\u201d Matthew Lippman writes in Mesmerizingly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14234","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14234"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20470,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14234\/revisions\/20470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}