So anyway.

The drama surrounding this book, JEEZ u know. It's fine. In some ways, if I hadn't been privy to the drama, the "oh my god did u see that misha and his wife separated two months before the book is released, leaked in the acknowledgements, i probably would have been like: yeah, this is fine. But now, I'm conflicted.

Because on the one hand -- based on MC's social media behavior over the last year, it really does feel like he's monetizing his divorce. On the other hand, this is a really solid book of poems. As with all poetry books there are some that stick out as much better than others and some which are just not very good at all. The ones that are good -- precise, evocative imagery, suggestive and careful in tone and feeling -- are often undercut by a certain amount of insecurity in his own work, with a final line that insists on the point he's making, instead of letting us, me, the reader of his work, actually spend some time with the poem and puzzle it out, which is part of the fun of poetry. And yet, the poem is still good.

Part of me really wants to either HATE or LOVE this book, to be able to mock it (my top two pastimes are getting enraged about poetry and enraged about supernatural drama, so this is like, the perfect opportunity to combine these hobbies), but I don't feel that way. I just LIKE it. The poems that are presumably about his ex-wife are filled with a deep, human amount of sadness and the poems about his kids are legitimately touching. Whatever my misgivings about Misha as a person are, he's like, actually fully human here and also a half way decent poet.