Grass Animals: Poetry by Kevin Leal and Brian Koppen

This collection of poems is fresh, surprising, and brief. Each piece captures vivid scenes and images, often in just a handful of lines. Many give you a glimpse into an entire social world full of relationships between strange yet familiar characters and their conflicts of desire (e.g., "Jorge's trunk/was full of knockoffs/Colognes and perfumes/we could sell").

At their best, these poems are also very funny, with the last lines functioning like a punchline to rueful joke on the way we live, as in the mid-collection gem "Magic Grow": "Into spit cups/the maid of honor/dropped capsules,/which grew into/respectable/cock-and-balls/by the end of the wine tasting."

I look forward to more of these authors' unique vision and voices.

This collection of poems feels in the spirit of haiku: capturing snapshots of time and noting the ironic, the whimsical, the awe-inspiring, the embarrassing, and much more in just a few lines. I enjoyed so many of these poems and the way they build vivid images in my mind with so few words. There were a few sensations I really would rather not have felt, and there are a few places where I felt like I was on the outside of an inside joke. But overall, I liked more poems than I disliked, and I'd read this collection again.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

The poems are short but far from simple.. The collection features poems that feel like stories that have more hidden behind them, others like they are captioning a picture. The poems range from humorous to deep, but all of them are enjoyable. The collection feels weaved together and the titles are often clever. The collection includes poems that allow the reader to fell a full range of emotions.

This is the perfect everyday read that you can leave on your desk to revise every now and then.

I was caught off guard at first, thinking there was something missing on the poems and it was going to be hard to enjoy. As I moved onto poem 3, my brain surprised me with an analysis of the previous ones, and as I laughed, I realised these are meant to be digested, not just read.

Some make you laugh, some make you frown, some make you want to know more about that life, because as you progress, you realize you're reading fragments of a life. It was refreshing.

Such an intriguing batch of poetry! I never know what to expect on the next page. Some made me giggle, others made think. I really enjoyed the poems that told a very short story of everyday life that one had to think just a bit to piece together. I am not a big fan of the spacing and I find that it is the most difficult for me to understand the purpose of, but that is probably due to my novice level of poetry comprehension.

Thank you NetGalley and the authors for the ARC!