The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine (Penguin Poets)

An unconventional new collection from a National Poetry Series award winner.

Mark Yakich as acclaimed debut collection, Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross, examined the blessing and curse of romantic love in its multiplicities. The poems in his new collection approach questions of suffering and atrocity (e.g., war, genocide, fallen soufflA(c)s) with discerning humor and unconventional comedy. These poems show how humor can be taken as seriously as straight-ahead solemnity and how we can re-envision solemnity in terms other than lamentation, protest, and memorial.

"This bold second collection is profane, political and humorous in its engagement with what it means to live, especially as a poet, in terrible times. A former National Poetry Series winner, Yakich (Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross) showcases a mixture of dark wit (in poems with titles like 'Spell to Bring Me Osama Bin Laden'); clowning sorrow ('When I apply my manhood like makeup,/ Everything is at once promising/ and suspect'); strident opinions ('Let the mind worry/ about the logic. But don't // Forget to drag the body,/ As witness, through the sand'); and sociopolitical awareness ('What about a flag of bacon? Oh I would/ Not have the courage to fly it'). Private poems (on family, parenthood, sex, suicide) mediate between, and meditate on, the book's otherwise public focus, showing a softer side of Yakich's agile lyricism: 'Paper,// Tell the tree/ I'm sorry.// Tree, tell/ The paper// My story.'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Yakich's poetry radiates an aura of fresher imaginative possibilities that is invigorating in politically literal times." San Francisco Chronicle

"Yakich's poems are smart and funny, fragmented and whole, little slaps into consciousness followed by long, painful echoes of growing awareness. You'll be taking them in for a very long time." The Times-Picayune

Mark Yakich's poems and drawings have been published in various magazines, including 3rd Bed, Arts and Letters, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, and Indiana Review.