{"id":1379,"date":"2011-07-27T19:57:49","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T19:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/product\/import-placeholder-for-6\/"},"modified":"2023-05-23T12:24:32","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T16:24:32","slug":"american-busboy","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/product\/american-busboy\/","title":{"rendered":"American Busboy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Matthew Guenette says your mother is a busboy, it sounds like an insult. When he says Jesus is a busboy, it sounds like a prayer. But aren\u2019t we all busboys? Aren\u2019t we all essential to the hum of daily life? Aren\u2019t we all unsung? Don\u2019t we all put cornstarch in our polyester pants to keep from getting a butt rash? The next time you\u2019re chowing down at\u00a0The\u00a0<\/b>Clam<\/b>\u00a0Shack!<\/b>\u00a0and some pimply teenager or schoolteacher working a second job staggers by with a trayful of dirty dishes, you\u2019ll remember these ballsy, all-American poems and think, poetry in motion.
\n\u2014David Kirby, author of\u00a0Talking About Movies with Jesus<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

With no apologies and with no mercy, but with an electrifying degree of lyric energy, Matthew Guenette brings the mindset of a stifled serving class to life in\u00a0American Busboy<\/i>. In this book\u2019s world, \u201cthe restaurant\u2005\/never asked you to\u2005\/imagine imaginary\u2005\/things like the brittle\u2005\/\u2009bones of onion rings.\u201d Instead, a manager sticks his hand first in the breader, then the Frialator, just to prove a point; on another night, a middle-aged waitress gets taken home via a dirt road. \u201cThe restaurant needed\u2005\/\u2009a spanking all morning,\u201d is the brassy declaration of \u201cNational Ice Cream Sandwich Day,\u201d \u201c& would need a good spanking\u2005\/all summer long.\u201d Using irreverent humor, clever lineation, formal invention, and alliteration worthy of Chaucer,\u00a0American Busboy<\/i>\u00a0cuts to the front of the line for the attention of any lover of fresh, funny\u2014yet movingly vulnerable\u2014contemporary poetry.
\n\u2014Sandra Beasley, author of\u00a0\u2009I\u2006\u2006Was the Jukebox<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Matthew Guenette\u2019s funky, funny collection,\u00a0American Busboy<\/i>, isn\u2019t about \u201cthe flawed\u2005\/democracy of lobster tanks,\u201d but it could be if the lobsters were replaced with grumbling busboys and the tank was exchanged for\u00a0The Clam Shack!<\/b>, a restaurant that \u201cdrags its tired butt, but\u2005\/never shuts its smack-talk mouth.\u201d In these incisive poems, untouchable waitresses step on the heads of busboys while cultural luminaries like Dorothy, Rilke, and Al Pacino revel in their own busboy aspirations. Through Guenette\u2019s adroit and surprising verse, social critique and quixotic imagery do a double team, and when the main busser dozens us by saying \u201cYour mother was a busboy,\u201d the call-out is complete. We are all complicit in busboy democracy, whether we want to be or not.
\n\u2014Adrian Matejka, author of\u00a0Mixology<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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About the author<\/h3>\n
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Matthew Guenette received an MFA from Southern Illinois University. He is the author of two previous poetry collections:\u00a0American Busboy<\/em>\u00a0(University of Akron Press, 2011) and\u00a0Sudden Anthem<\/em>\u00a0(Dream Horse Press, 2008) as well as a chapbook,\u00a0Civil Disobedience<\/em>(Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2017). Recent work has appeared in\u00a0Forklift: Ohio<\/em>,\u00a0Spoon River Poetry Review<\/em>,\u00a0Sou\u2019wester<\/em>,\u00a0Southern Indiana Review<\/em>, and\u00a0TYPO<\/em>. He lives in Madison, WI, and teaches composition and creative writing at Madison College.<\/p>\n

Other books by Matthew Guenette<\/h3>\n