IRL struck me as intimate and epic. Pico's use of abbreviation and the structure of the poem felt equally playful and sad, as if texting a friend personal and graduate-level confessions.

Chatty, playful, hot, sticky, visceral. I love it.

As I was reading this, it really made me examine language and I admired how Pico played with language and how language played with him, if that makes sense. I really enjoy when poetry does that because it is so sparse sometimes, as a medium, that without that playfulness, it can be repetitive or dry or turn people off poetry because it seems so academic.

IRL doesn't do that. At first, it felt a little like Instagram / Tumblr / Twitter poetry, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I thought I'd be irritated by his voice, and then I heard his humour and his cheekiness and I had so much fun reading this. Because of Pico's direct references to certain technologies (like Grindr) I'm curious to see how this book ages.

If you've studied poetry at school and were just totally sick of it, this is the anecdote. Pico is soft, pastel-pink rebellion, self-deprecating humour hiding generations of pain, asserting himself and then questioning himself. He is not the hero to his own story and yet that makes him heroic in my heart.

He tore himself down to build himself back up and I wish I could see him live, listen to the words he crafts. I'll leave this as a 4 star review for now, but if it stays on my mind, I might increase the star rating.

He is Puck, and all of this is a dream, and Brooklyn NYC is his playground. ( )

You can read my review at the New York Journal of Books:

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/irl-poem ( )