Loren Goodman

Irreverent, pop culture-obsessive and contemplative, Shitting on Elves & Other Poems is a Dadaistic self-portrait of twins in an existential playground, where everyone and no one gets hurt too badly. But it does hurt. For all of the celebratory preoccupation with companions of the deep, in the rough schoolyard play, you know something is wrong, Mr. Jones. Something more than a skinned knee. Truth slips between meanings, some words become other words, a conceptual kind of magician's poetry that skips through a mine field of radioactive icons and self-detonating idols, each itinerant reflection, each telegraphic puzzle, expiring in zany isolation and nostalgia. We have come to this. Bankrupt and rejoicing. This twitchy book of poetry is history and hope. You read it. --Michael Rothenberg

As Elaine Equi writes: We once lived in a world of "just the facts" and have now transitioned into a time of "alternative facts." But Loren Goodman's new book announces the next era - that of "Non-Existent Facts." He shows in a witty way the vast amount of fantasy that makes up history itself - and how non-facts sharing untruth in common become joyously interchangeable as eras collapse into each other. "Sir Mix-a-lot" hangs out with "Queen Arthur" and "King Guinevere." And "You know the legend of King Midas: everything he touched turned to mufflers."

The 97th winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize This year’s winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Loren Goodman’s Famous Americans. Hilarious, eclectic, and bizarre, this collection takes the reader on a roller coaster of a ride through the absurdities of American pop culture. Employing a variety of forms (from epistolary to script to interview and beyond), this work proves to be as much about exploring frameworks as it is about examining the lives of famous and not-so-famous Americans. Goodman questions our concept of what it means to be an icon: he disrupts our assumptions, creating an alternate universe in which nothing remains sacred.