Customer Reviews

Tabloid News: Poems

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In a world that increasingly exists in virtual domains, these humorous and thought provoking poems cause us to suspend our own definitions of reality. Here Leax shows that the bizarre can be surprisingly familiar.

I bought this book thinking that the premise, titles are headlines taken from Weekly World News and the poems themselves spin off from there, would be delightful for teens. While I think some of the sheer silliness of the concepts would appeal to younger teens, Leax did a fantastic job of giving humanity to Bat Boy and the World's Fattest Twins among other characters populating this collection. A great book for poetry lovers of all ages.

Finding himself in front of the tabloids that line the supermarket checkout lines everywhere, John Leax asked "what if the stories under the headlines were true?" What if, to quote one headline, "leaping turtles" did invade the United States?

The resulting poems --- meditations (if you will) on the fear and longing that likely lurk beneath the radar of the stories --- are often funny, as you might expect, but also quite thoughtful, probing the reasons why some of us are, to one degree or another, are attracted to such outrageous stories. Reading poems with titles like "Bat Boy is Missing" or "I Want to Have a Space Alien's Baby," I had the same sense one has in seeing the oddities or freaks on the midway at the fair --- curiosity, disbelief, shock, repulsion, and pity. Do we read because we desire to know if there is something beyond our mundane existence? Or maybe because the loneliness or strangeness the characters that people these stories feel may reflect some of our own sense of alienation, our own sense of being alone in our own peculiarities. Whatever the reason, such stories of the strange and bizarre never seem to leave us, and Leax does good work by helping us see them from the inside out. While a few poems beg for short story treatment and seem ill-suited for the economy of a poem, most shine. You might even find yourself mirrored in the bizarre characters Leax brings to life. All because a writer asked "what if."

These poems are masterful- by turns hilarious and breathtaking. Leax does an amazing job sharing insights into American culture and religion by taking these tabloid headlines as starting points.