Susan Kay Anderson reviews Heather Cadsby's How to (2023)

Susan Kay Anderson was good enough to provide the first review of Heather Cadsby's How to (2023) over at NewPages; thanks so much! See the original post here. As she writes:

The prose poems in How To by Heather Cadsby are hilarious, and their titles are satisfying enough, let alone the bodies of the poems. Some examples: “How to catch flamboyant bohemians,” “How to tell if it’s different,” and “How to look at a broken fountain.” Each one offers its own non-advice and leads me to hunger for more.

I love how Cadsby plays with expectations. These poems offer surprises that are language-based without being frustrating to read. They are LOL poems, as in this line from “How to know if your venn diagram is pentimento”:

Golf is geometry as is burlesque.

These are funny and my mind creates illustrations or comic images to go with them as I read. I am challenged by this as a reader and also immensely entertained. Not a lot of poetry is funny. Many times, when poets try to be funny, they start rhyming or sound like Dean Young imitators (even though that is a good thing). Thank goodness to have read Cadsby’s inventions, I say to myself, wondering how I will manage to set this book down and get my mind back.