Pop Poetry

There certainly is more than one kind of love. Using traditional forms of poetry (e.g., sonnet, pantoum) and forms from the pop song (e.g., perfect rhyme, repetition), Thomas Gagnon describes different kinds of love: romance and friendship—with men and with women—love for a father and for a mentor, even fascination with a celebrity dancer. Beneath these relationships—like the ancient town beneath the new city—is the relationship with the self, an especially complicated relationship that Gagnon does not shrink from exploring, whether whimsically or solemnly, or whimsically and solemnly in one poem. These poems will reverberate in your mind—like the lyrics from the latest pop song.