Book Review: You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored by Justin Marks

You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored
Poems by Justin Marks
Barrelhouse Books, February 2014
ISBN-13: 978-0988994515
$15.00; 74pp.
Reviewed by Michael Luke Benedetto

Midway through You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored, Justin Marks admits, “For 35 years I had / no story to tell Only words / in need of form.” The forms his words have taken in this, his second, collection range from a nineteen-part sequence of pseudo sonnets to “Voir Dire,” a single-stanza, short-lined poem spanning the first six pages. But all forms aside, it’s clear Marks is lying. He does in fact have a story to tell, one as simultaneously absorbing, conflicting, charming, and strange as any poet’s.

The title and cover image make it clear this isn’t your grandpa’s poetry. The kind of witty observations, bizarre juxtapositions, and linguistic acrobatics one might expect are common in poems like “On Happier Lawns”:

Toothpicks from a dead man’s
estate   A baby
crying through a bull-horn
I project myself into the future
as a slogan on a sandwich
board   Tennis at 3   Homemade
sex tapes   I’m so happy
I could puke

From “going on about ontological bowling” to “ambient break dancing,” from the odd and sudden anecdotal moments that sneak in (“I misread the word applause as applesauce”) to the tongue-in-cheek one-liners (“The key to marriage, / I profess to my single friends, / is not getting divorced”), it’s clear Marks is at the very least having fun and at most purposefully subverting what might be called a “stodgier” brand of poetry.

But Marks does go deeper. By accompanying him on his daily subway rides, being bombarded by the same myriad of modern digital stimuli, and sharing in his ubiquitous human anxieties, we see a thirty-something husband and father of two living in New York City emerge. In the several sections of “Pink Clouds of the Apocalypse,” lines like “When I think about my wife and children I wonder, / how did that happen It’s all / so overwhelming,” stand alongside “My greatest motivation / is fear of my children / dying I’m a body, says my daughter / Your body.” A quick pun or cheap joke almost always pushes moments like these apart, but within this duality of thought there is great truth and sincerity.

The very brief section “Naïve Melody” begins, “I want to write a poem where I drop all pretense and simply talk as straightforward as I can.” This poem contemplates aging, fatherhood, religion and spirituality, pet ownership, and eventually the “poverty of poetry.” Sharing in the mental anguish of long-admired and fellow poets, our speaker concludes:

it’s difficult, all this uncertainty,
exhausting, really, each moment being consumed
by trying to make the right decision—

not think about

the ways

I’ve failed.

The playful moments where Marks punches through the fourth wall (the opening pages include the lines “I know you know / I’m spying on you / spying on me / spying on you.”) thinly veil a more critical consideration of poetry in the twenty-first century. Or as Marks might put it, he can be “a real metafucker.”

Creative uncertainty is apparent in the lines of the opening poem, “I sometimes believe everything / I’ll ever do or say / is already inside / someone else.” But this blossoms into a deep self-doubt nearing anger in later poems:

The poem is a problem
only a fool would want to solve   Ridiculous
music   A meaningless
tattoo   Burn blisters that resemble
redactions   Silence that leads
to shipwreck   Such
exaggerated laughter

Why would anyone foolishly attempt to “solve” the problem of poetry? Why are there so many out there slaving away to push their books out into the dense media-soup we wade through daily? Well, Marks says it best himself, “I feel best when I write best.”

The back cover of You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored is topped with a blurb by Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips: “Justin Marks has a problem. He’s a poet who hates poetry, which is good for us. You see, we want lies. That’s where the art is.” Though I would never refute the words of Mr. Coyne (and I mean that with all sincerity), maybe “hates” is too strong a word here, or one that should immediately be followed by a slash and the word “loves” because this book of poetry does exist. It is here for us to enjoy. The spectrums this collection traverses—between love and hate, clarity and obscurity, sincerity and pure wise-assery—are what make it great. I enjoy You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored for its humor, wit, and honesty—and I think anyone could—but as someone invested in and intrigued by the world of poetry, both past and present, I appreciate it for far more.

Michael Luke Benedetto is a writer and editor who lives in San Diego, CA. His work has appeared in the Long River Review and The Essay Connection.