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Book Review: Throwing the Crown by Jacob Saenz
 

Throwing the Crown
Jacob Saenz
The American Poetry Review
2018
978-0983300878
80 Pages
$15.00


Poet and editor Jacob Saenz was born in Chicago and raised in Cicero, Illinois. He earned a BA in creative writing from Columbia College in Chicago. His first collection of poetry, Throwing the Crown (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), was awarded the 2018 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize.

Saenz has been an editor at Columbia Poetry Review and an associate editor at RHINO. He works as an acquisitions assistant at the Columbia College library and has read his poetry at a number of Chicago venues. A CantoMundo fellow, he has also been the recipient of a Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship.



Review





















A Review of Jacob Saenz's Throwing the Crown

Throwing the Crown tells the story of the dirt, grime, and glitter of early boyhood in a Chicago with concrete stomped by pit bulls, gangbangers, and bachelors. A story that allows for that boyhood to morph into a manhood filled with frozen pizzas and jaded weddings. Jacob Saenz illustrates a world that is genuine and brimming with motley characters while showcasing writing that exhibits a strength in storytelling, a resonant musicality and an elegant precision. In the poem, “Demon,” we see this lyrical prowess on full blast:
We feasted on these salty & spicy
corn sticks like a pack of hyenas
cackling over a cracked open
carcass of antelope, our tongues
& fingers turning crimson

The crisp hard /c/ creates the crunch of the corn stick, but also verbal cuts, through every breath. Saenz has a grasp over the vindictive powers of sound as well as meaning within his poetry.
 
Midway through Throwing the Crown, we get the “bachelor” poems: a lonely culmination of weddings, TV shows, and household chores that create searing self-introspection. The bachelor is consistently contemplating love and the caustic longing for it. In “The Bachelor Attends a Wedding,” one’s desires are both criticized and recognized in a wedding’s sweat of love:

The garter fling forces me
to bring my nephew amongst the bachelors
& use his body to deflect the lace projectile.
A groomsman catches it & stuffs it
into his mouth like a bone. I tell my nephew
we’re all animals & he wants more ice cream.

Saenz embodies this bachelor persona that encapsulates the strange otherness in single adulthood, as you witness the virile lustiness of others and the pseudo-fantasy that surrounds the realm of passion. In “The Bachelor Watches The Bachelor,” it is the “pre-packaged romantic dates / I could never afford on my bachelor budget” that is inhabited “w/Prince Charming played by an actor / I’ve seen slaughter & behead a soldier” that spotlights this strange division. Saenz comments on the way society and media has glamorized and tainted the dating scene, and the bachelor persona shows the more conflicting reality of the situation.
 
Saenz also has a talent for bringing in unusual subjects to comment on the familiar yet critical issues of today. In “Gang of the Dead” we get a reinvention of the zombie with “Our primal instinct kicks in when we see / hordes of lumbering pale corpses / like conquistadores w/out horses.” Here we see a reinvention of the horde as a mob that is here to conquer brains rather than land. Saenz mixes the long-ago history of colonialization with the undead automaton of the zombie which is heavily used in popular media. This mirroring of consumerism and expansionism shows us how tactics have evolved.
 
Throwing the Crown illustrates the tumult in the collision of the fantastical, the hormonal, and the human. It is gang-life mixed with baseball and video games. Saenz’s unique voice propels this book and gives the poems a genuine sense of humanity through “lips / smacked together w/force & intent."


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Zachary Klozik is an undergraduate at Lewis University, studying English and Film Studies. He resides in New Lenox, Illinois and is the Marketing & Design Editor and a Poetry Editor for Jet Fuel Review. He is a Wolny Writing Residency fellow and he coordinates and hosts an Open Mic Night series in Lockport, IL. He has been published in Windows Fine Arts Magazine.

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  • Home
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022