Book Note: A Bank Robber’s Bad Luck with His Ex-Girlfriend

Poetry

A Bank Robber’s Bad Luck with His Ex-Girlfriend
By KJ Hannah Greenburg
Unbound Content, 2011

Reviewed by Ginny Kaczmarek, LM Assistant Poetry Editor

“Songbirds are entertaining. Roses smell nice. Most passion, however, resolves as cacophonous and stinky.”

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, KJ Hannah Greenburg, has published a new book of poetry, A Bank Robber’s Bad Luck with His Ex-Girlfriend. Organized into three sections, Hope, Hurt, and Highways, these poems explore romantic love–hot and heavy or on the wane–with wit and honesty.

With her dense language, serpentine syntax, and occasionally anachronistic rhyme schemes, Greenburg manages to sound both Victorian and brashly modern. Interspersed with lines such as “When I was shepherded athwart merry straits to your doyenne-like center” (from “Poisoning via Toothbrush After ‘Romancing'”) are graphic descriptions of oral sex or revenge fantasies of a spurned lover (see previous poem title). A quirky mix of humor and pathos, A Bank Robber’s Bad Luck, showcases an original voice and a poet worth keeping an eye on.

A few lines from “Simple Arithmetic” for Valentine’s Day:
Perhaps general mood states ought
To trickle down the hippocampal more often.
Meanwhile, there’s chocolate doughnuts.