Michael Robbins

About

Alien vs. Predator (Penguin Books, 2012)
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"Mr. Robbins’s heart is not lovely but beating a bit arrhythmically; not dark but lighted by a dangling disco ball; not deep but as shallow and alert as a tidal buoy facing down a tsunami. Yet it’s a heart crammed full, like a goose’s liver, with pagan grace. This man can write." — Dwight Garner, The New York Times

University of Chicago PhD

@alienvsrobbins
please direct all publicity requests to langan.kingsley@us.penguingroup.com

[Best Books of 2012 lists on which Alien vs. Predator appears]
The New York Times
The New York Times (2)
The Boston Globe
Slate
The New York Observer
The Australian
Commonweal
Complex
Books & Culture
Vol. 1 Brooklyn
Vol. 1 Brooklyn (2)
The Millions

[Recent poems]
The Walrus (forthcoming)
The New Yorker
Poetry
Boston Review
The Awl
La Petite Zine
HTMLGIANT
nonsite
Poetry

[Reviews of Alien vs. Predator]
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times
The Washington Post
Financial Times
The Boston Globe
Entertainment Weekly
Publishers Weekly
The New York Observer
National Post
The Weekly Standard
Library Journal
The Kansas City Star
The Boston Phoenix

[Recent interviews & profiles]
The Believer
Chicago Tribune
Los Angeles Review of Books
Newcity
Suicide Girls
The New York Observer
The Paris Review
Vol. 1 Brooklyn
The Best American Poetry
Bomblog

[Recent reviews & such]
(I also write regularly for the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, too often to link to here)
on Pistol Annies [SPIN]
on Susan Wheeler [Books & Culture]
on Anne Carson [The New York Observer]
on My Bloody Valentine [SPIN]
on Swinburne [Poetry]
on Dylan Thomas [Poetry]
on Louise Glück [The Los Angeles Review of Books]
on Taylor Swift [SPIN]
on genre fiction [Chicago Tribune]
on Neil Young [The New York Observer]
on pop music and poetry [Chicago Tribune]
on Frederick Seidel [Chicago Tribune]
on Maureen N. McLane [The New York Observer]
on Marilynne Robinson [The New York Observer]
on Perdita [Poetry]
on Geoffrey Hill, Ish Klein, & Fanny Howe [Poetry]
on Fucked Up [The Daily]
on Wild Flag [The Daily]
on David Orr [The New York Observer]
various reviews in Poetry magazine
on John Ashbery [London Review of Books]
on Nick Lowe [Village Voice]
on Bruce Springsteen [Village Voice]
on the Gaslight Anthem [Village Voice]

"Embrace Michael Robbins as a damned funny poet, but appreciate that he's a damned good craftsman too. Melded to the punch line is the prosody—a trochee here, a Dickinsonian stanza there, a brush stroke that conjures Mayakovsky, a pie in the face to Basho. The easiest way to say it is this: prepare to be impressed."—Lisa Jarnot

"These poems are bad for you, the way alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, bacon, carbohydrates, television and the internet are bad for you. Better pick up extra copies for your villa, your chalet, your hutment, your yurt, and your sidewalk grate."—Jordan Davis

Like What You See?

Monday, August 20, 2012

Some dopey kid said I have “shitty taste in music” because I love Taylor Swift & Pink. It’s good to be reminded that some people haven’t figured out that their distaste for pop is simply—I insist it is simply—a class marker. If you want to live in an aesthetically foreclosed world where your love of x or hate of y marks you as better than a) stoners, b) hicks, or c) mall rats, you’re welcome to do so. But don’t pretend it has anything at all to do with music. It’s just about your sneering, fragile little self, all wrapped up in a band tee like a security blanket. I like to think there’s nothing baffling about loving, at the same time, Taylor Swift, Converge, Sonic Youth, Lil Wayne, George Jones, Ornette Coleman, Geeshie Wiley, the Band, Iron Maiden, & Sarah Vaughan. It’s always the right time to remember what Dave Hickey said: “Bad taste is real taste, of course, and good taste is the residue of someone else’s privilege.”

Tumbleroll

Colophon

This tumblelog is powered by Tumblr, and was designed by Bill Israel.