POETRY REVIEWGet More Radby Dustin HollandCheeseburger Nebula Galactic Press
Cheeseburger Nebula Galactic Press seems less like a publishing house, and more like an ongoing effort. The specific effort seems to be towards as much art, deconstruction of norms, and misadventure as a group of like-minded individuals can pack into a long weekend along a strange coast. You can decide for yourself if this is a good thing or not, but I personally think it is. Certainly, if the end result is going to be something as appealing and odd as Get More Rad, then it might be best to let these misfits do what they please.
Although Get More Rad is perhaps the kind of thing that is better appreciated live (poems like “10 things i’d do if i cld freeze time” emphasize this suspicion), there is still a substantial amount of appeal to this poetry collection. Holland packs a lot of singular, razor-tipped wit into lines such as the following:
“in new mexico the sky
is a leonard cohen song
that everyone's sick of singing
along with but they do
anyway every night because
the clouds get so big
and who isn't a sucker
for hallelujah?”
At the same time, such passages reveal a distinctive eye for creepy details, wild possibilities, and the constant madhouse festivities of our times. Holland doesn’t seem to be someone with a great deal of patience for things. In certain aspects of life, that would obviously be problematic. With Get More Rad, it works far more often than not. This is due in large part to the fact that Holland is a phenomenal, diverse writer. His imagination more than makes this clear, and his discipline towards structure that onlyseems haphazard puts an exclamation point at the end of that particular sentence.
In the end, Get More Rad also works because quite frankly, the world is a fucked up, one-sided romantic comedy. As will always be the case, it’s nice to have art that reminds us of this reality in the best fashion possible.
Holland swears he’s only having fun. Fair enough, but it is fun of a very real, very blunt fashion.
