A Daily Glance
Nick Demske's Half Glass is energetic, ironic, self-promoting, and self-deprecating. Reading through it, I immediately thought of John Berryman's Dream Songs, and when I flipped back to the first poem, I noticed a Berryman quotation. Like Berryman, Demske becomes a character in the work, and as a character he has conversations with himself; plus, the chapbook is composed of sonnets. The poems have a political feel at moments, but when they start to seem comfortable, they shift, keeping up always on our toes:
I'm faking it. For real. I actually have
No idea what the weather will be
Like. No evidence supports this agurment hab
It, this lip-synching lifeboat, these rhymes
Is this sex to authenticity to weather to arguments (or agur) to language as commodity? Demske's word play is fascinating. Basically, we're moving at full speed in this chapbook.
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