Stephen Bett’s poetry is a self-referential funhouse that reflects the modern tension between a commitment to ideas and life in a pop-culture world. In High Maintenance an ironic wit colours poems about everything from hockey and literature to snowboarding with a porn star. It is a report on the state of a world where products replace thought and convenience is the highest of moral principles.
Ordering High Maintenance
- ISBN 1-894800-42-7, Ekstasis Editions 2004, 88 Pages
What Others Are Saying
Stephen Bett’s latest [poetry] takes a straight-edge to the oddities of contemporary life, both reveling in and tearing to bits the inanity of the everyday…. a scathing and hilarious romp through the frivolous horrors of actually paying attention to what’s going on around us.
—Jason Dewinetz
“Wonderful poems, truly. Lively, engaging, smart…risk-taking and groundbreaking.”
—Michael Holmes
“[A] healthy mix of Kootenay school media saturated cynicism with an Olsonian sense of folksy grandeur.”
—Tim Davis
Its mouthy pizazz & fearless taking on of whatever the pop & political culture throws at us
—Don McKay
A wonderful sense of the energetic possibilities of language and a keen sense that it can be used for social change, in a very direct way, through poetry
—Brenda Hillman
“Anyone who had read his [previous books] knows that Stephen Bett is an on-target satirist….He is outraged by the inanities of modern culture and doesn’t apologize for his skewering of them….[His] caustic wit is in top form in this collection.”
—The Rain Review of Books