An exercise in poetic license

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One of the things I love most about poetry is that it’s adaptable. You can find poetry almost anywhere, if you look for it--a bus billboard, a T-shirt, the lyrics of a song. I have one friend who used to publish poems on matchbooks, and another who put poetry on postcards, or in storefront window displays. If the poem is sharp enough, it almost works better in an unexpected setting because it takes us by surprise.

Charles Harper Webb’s chapbook ‘How to Live’ is an illustration of this idea in action. Containing a single poem (taken from his 2006 full-length collection ‘Amplified Dog’), it’s an instantly digestible poetic experience, a crash course on the good life.

Published by Blue Q, a novelty store in Pittsfield, Mass., ‘How to Live’ is a lovely little volume--maybe 2 x 2 ½ inches, with different-colored pages and block letter text--that packs a punch because Webb’s work is so cogent, humorous and wise. ‘Try not to lie; it sours the soul,’ he writes at one point. ‘But being a patsy sours it too.’ Later, he declares, simply: ‘Enjoy success.’

Webb, of course, is a local stalwart--a professor of English at Cal State Long Beach and one of the pioneers of Southern California’s Stand Up poetry scene. With ‘How to Live,’ he reminds us that there is more than one way to get a poem across.

David L. Ulin