Daniel Handler Looks into Matthea Harvey's Tabloids

Daniel Handler shares his excitement for Matthea Harvey's writing, old and new, at the LA Times, beginning with Harvey's first collection Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, which is "still holding the crown for Most Delicious Poetry Collection Title to Say Out Loud, despite challengers like 'Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread' and 'Ooga-Booga.'" A strong lot to contend with, indeed. But the real occasion for the piece is Harvey's latest title Tabloids, "awash with these layouts — flip through the pages and you see photographs, drawings and assorted whatnot, just the sort of thing that catches your eye in a café." More:

The collection has some wilder flourishes — Harvey whites out a few pages of a Ray Bradbury book, and there's a section of nothing but photographs of toys frozen in ice — but for the most part the book is more conventional, each poem laid alongside a photograph that more or less directly corresponds, i.e. the Elvis poem has a photograph of some Elvis dolls. As with picture books, it's tricky to get the balance right; an honest-to-goodness sonnet, "Michelin Man Possessed by William Shakespeare," begins, "I've taken many forms over the years." Already funny. I am picturing it. Do I need a picture of a Michelin Man?

This is a question I keep chewing over with this book. A long poem, "Inside the Glass Factory," has photographs of bottles alongside each stanza. When the girl factory-workers of the poem "are all having/the same idea at the same time — /to make a girl out of glass," suddenly the wallpaper becomes foreground, and the shapes of the bottles become shapelier; it's a terrific moment. But then there's the long piece that closes the collection, concerning a mostly forgotten Italian inventor, in which the scripty texts scramble with some hand-stitched illustrations. It lost me completely; even as I stared, fascinated, I didn't know where we were.

Head over to the LA Times to find out how a teenager in a café helped Handler find his way to "the coolest book in the world."