Adultolescence, written and illustrated by Gabbie Hanna

This sort of book is a sign of the existence of a serious problem, and that is the way that adulthood and childhood seem to be juxtoposed in a period of long tension.  As someone who is familiar with the difficulty of proving one is an adult and handling adult responsibilities well, it is little surprise that there should be a generation of people who do not know what it means to be an adult and who do not feel respected as an adult or consider themselves to be fully adult.  All of this creates a serious problem, but it can create the opportunity for worthwhile reflections.  If this book is not as good as it could be, it is not a misconceived project because being inspired by poets past (even poets who were inspired by Shel Silverstein) to deal with a serious problem of knowing one’s stage in life is something that at least theoretically could have been done well.  And this is not a bad book, but the way it is written is not always to my taste even if there are definitely some good poems here that can be enjoyed by the reader.

This particular book is over 200 pages but most of the poems are fairly short and there are a lot of illustrations so it is not quite as large a book as might appear to be the case at first.  The poetry in this book is of a rather wide selection of topics and rather wide differences in terms of poetic achievement.  Some of the poems are small enough that they fit inside drawings, for example one on lightbulbs.  Other poems reflect upon strangers and the pressure for intimacy that can be found in romantic relationships of one kind or another.  Some of the poems consist of dialogue between a male and female character, usually demonstrating some sort of difference or misunderstanding between the two.  Still other poems deal with questions about pets or family or communication, all of which are issues that others can relate to.  The language in the poems is pretty simple, and often extremely repetitive.  Still, there are at least some people who appreciate this kind of poetry, and those who are old enough to appreciate jokes about douches while also having enough simplicity of intellect to prefer poems that repeat words like “like” over and over again may find much to enjoy here.

As a reader (and writer) of poetry, I tend to have certain aspects I prefer in my poems, namely I prefer there to be a solid attention to poetic form, whether one is dealing with rhyme, meter, or at least something like running stops.  I’m even okay with prose poems so long as they are written properly.  This poet seems to have been inspired by E.E. Cummings with the refusal to use capital letters, though, and that sort of sloppiness is not something that I greatly appreciate.  The illustrations are generally of decent quality, at least, and as might be expected there is some crudity in the book in terms of how the subject matter of being both a child and adult simultaneously is addressed.  Those readers who want elevated material will perhaps want to look elsewhere as this one includes some pretty rough language.  Still, if this is by no means the deepest set of poems, there are at least some poignant subjects dealt with.  If the poet is not the best at her craft, she at least has a good idea of what to write about if she would only improve her skill and develop some capacity to avoid trite cliches.