Yeshiva Boys: Poems Book

My thinking is, IF I want to be a poet, I need to like poetry. Too many people write venting poetry, but they never, never, never read someone else's work. So several years ago I decided I would read poetry daily. I would seek out books of poetry to purchase monthly. That is how I came to Yeshiva Boys. I'd read a poem by Lehman on some website and so I bought the book. I am not Jewish, and I don't understand this deep culture that was more recently impacted by horror, but you do not have to be Jewish to get joy from this work. It seems autobiographical, at least in places, but it is power, disarmingly casual writing, easy to read, easy to understand. There is some hotsy totsy humor in the work like: Consider lines like, "The panty's over; it's time to call it a lay." [from The Road to Help] There is some insightful lines like: Man is the only animal who thinks he is the only animal." [from Hymn to Man}. Or like: "Face it, we're a nation of salesmen" [from Money Variations.}

I read a lot of bad poetry looking for good stuff. Yeshiva Boys is good stuff.