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PETROLEUM HAT

by Drew Gardner

"Petroleum Hat is natural language for a country at war. Unlike the old model of protest poetry, Drew Gardner isn't interested in earnest appeals to reason and compassion. He'll match the political spectacle absurdity for absurdity--and in the case of the funny and chilling `Chicks Dig War,' I'm struck by how thoroughly he understands the logic of our times. Lazy Darwinian accounts of ourselves as celebrated in the New York Times Science and Business sections are satirized in tones borrowed and blended from sitcoms and textbooks"
- Ange Mlinko

Funny, angry even when they are asleep, Drew Gardner’s poems hiss and crackle like downed power lines, in the process almost incidentally making major discoveries like “Formica is never more than an extension of tuna” and “I am searching for something/ but even more passionately/I am being sought out.” Hats off to Petroleum Hat.
- John Ashbery