CUTTY SPOT

[words on Spencer Madsen’s A Million Little Bears]

the internet allows ppl to post pretty much anything they want

I got bored & started writing abt the books I read (the ones I like or love)

I rly hope nobody takes these serious as ‘reviews’ in any ‘academic’ or ‘official’ sense of the word

so I think I’ll start calling these ‘words on…’ rather than ‘re-views’

so ppl don’t get the wrong idea

anyways I just re-read this book

I read it in one sitting on a bus

that’s what I like abt this book

you can read it in one sitting on a bus

the title ‘a million bears’ seems ‘absurd’

but I think spencer knows that

I personally like ‘absurd’

I am still trying to ‘figure out’ how I ‘feel’ abt this title

I feel like spencer madsen is respected in the alt-lit game

he seems to be a trend-setter

I love spencer’s lack of pretense

sometimes his poems feel like ‘tweet’-like language

humorous & honest & pithy

colloquial

he has interspersed tweets or psuedo-tweets from 50 Cent & Kanye West throughout the book

these rapper tweets feel gimmicky (obviously?), despite their humor

I am not necessarily saying this is a bad thing

his font changes sizes

I like this

he seems to be concerned, like several other writers today, in presenting a book that one can open at chance & read the page they have turned to without needing context

I rly enjoy this quality in a book

in this book

spencer seems pretty sad

& sometimes I wonder if that’s an ‘act’ or ‘reality’

it’s probably a bit of both, or maybe it’s neither

some of his lines very much resonate w/ me & make me want to return to them

& though I enjoy his ‘poems’ abt ‘lost’ or ‘unrequited’ love, I like when he breaks out of this mode perhaps more than when he remains in it

ppl like spencer madsen seem to be concerned w/ removing the ‘preciousness’ often associated w/ poetry from his ‘poems’

whew

my favorite moments from the book:

‘i want to be like people who dont know i want to be like / them’

‘there is a reason for why i feel weird / but the reason is why i feel weird / so i dont want to think about it’

‘i am good at not thinking about things that i do not want to / think about / but i think about them when i am sleeping’

‘being high / makes me anxious and scared / that i will never again have thoughts / without thinking about having thoughts / the tragedy is that flying is sitting in a chair / or is it on a chair / the culture i have is borrowed and unaccommodating’

‘kind of want to transfer to a really old university / to study magic’