I hadn't realized I've read Rogal before. In prose form. Several years ago, his novel, Comic, failed to make much if any of the impression, which is reflected in my review of it - it stands to point out, the only review to date on GR, despite the book being out for a minute.
Sure enough, my rating and review is the first now for this book.
And yet, such absence of conventional popularity hasn't stopped Rogal for creating more books or Canadian presses from publishing them. To be fair, it isn't that there's no talent there or no skill. It just that it takes more that talent and skill alone to write a compelling, interesting, enjoyable book.
This poetry collection, for instance, had a great idea behind it -a reinterpretation of popular songs. Rogal and his excellent vocabulary has done some interesting moody takes. But (and this may be partially due to the fact that this reader wasn't familiar with the majority of the songs used), the book just didn't sing on its own. It was clever but in a self-referential sort of way.
It stands to mention that poetry often doesn't work for me, or rather that it takes exceptional poetry to work for me, and therefor user mileage may vary here. But this review, as all my reviews, are meant to reflect a subjective reading experience, which was underwhelming. Thanks Netgalley.

This was super interesting! I’ve never read anything like what Stan Royal wrote in more songs the radio won’t play.

DNF I loves the idea and wanted to like this book a lot, but I couldn't connect with the poems. There were songs I was already familiar with like Sweet Dreams and Radio Ga Ga, but that made no difference. I guess this is too experimental for me and I'm not the kind of reader for this book.