Walkman

Penguin Poets

By: Michael Robbins

Narrated by: Tim Alexander

Length: 48 mins

Publisher's summary

A new collection from an audacious, humorous poet celebrated for his "sky-blue originality of utterance" (Dwight Garner, The New York Times).

Michael Robbins' first two books of poetry were raucous protests lodged from the frontage roads and big-box stores of off-ramp America. With Walkman, he turns a corner. These new poems confront self-pity and nostalgia in witty-miserable defiance of our political and ecological moment. It's the end of the world, and Robbins has listened to all the tapes in his backpack. So he's making music from whatever junk he finds lying around.

©2021 Michael Robbins (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"If you are a fellow devotee of the old Robbins, take heart: the new style only clarifies why the first books were so good. And if you have never read the guy before, start with this book - with this book, I insist, and not the first two books, because the new tone is as right for our time as the old one was for its time. A decade into the apocalypse, Robbins, God help him, has not yet averted his eyes.” (Cleveland Review of Books)

“The title poem sets a wistful, reflective, almost spiritual tone in a collection that addresses such serious subjects as heaven, hell, and faith with humor and self-deprecation.... Robbins is a master satirist, whether he's pontificating on the environment, the behavior of today’s youth, or his allergies, and he does it with a nod to taking things less seriously even as the apocalypse approaches.” (Booklist)

“If all you knew of Michael Robbins was his poem "Walkman" [...] you’d know he was the author of a stupendously beautiful poem that’s worth buying a whole book for.... Funny, tender, vulnerable, sad.... Ultimately, poetic attention to our losses will not save us, and there is plenty of despair, bitterness, and disgust to go around in these poems. And yet Walkman shows us, too, that loss can be mysterious, and can occasionally make the world seem less threadbare and disenchanted.” (Harvard Review)