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 Jane.Shim@us.penguingroup.com

[ Alien vs. Predator named one of the Best Books of 2012 by]
The Believer
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
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, essays, & such]
(I also write regularly for the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, too often to link to here)
On drones & drone poems [The Los Angeles Review of Books]
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

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Tuesday, June 5, 2012

“Michael Robbins shakes up poetry world with ‘Alien vs. Predator’” (Chicago Tribune)

Wonderful piece on me in the Chicago Tribune, if you care about that sort of thing:

Robbins is the poet of the moment, a poetry world phenom, one of the most discussed and best-selling contemporary poets in the country right now. Here’s the thing though: Whatever your mental image of a poet is — elbow patches, humorlessness, tweed and temperance — Robbins is not that guy.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Very kind profile of me in The New York Observer. Thank you, Michael Miller

With “Alien vs. Predator” Mr. Robbins had taken poetry indoors, and inside the head of the frustrated suburban loser. His work eschews the outside world for a stack of records and trashy television (T. Rex, Ghostface Killah, Xbox and Meerkat Manor all make appearances in the book). If the poem that gave the book its name hinted at the arrival of a new kind of poet—one whose obsession with contemporary pop culture might even have crossover potential—this excellent debut delivers on that promise.

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