Lisner, Ari: One Shtick Pony

“Take a bit of city bric-a-brac, gay it up, mix equal parts sly posturing and embarrassing earnesty, and voila—’ONE SHTICK PONY.’ Reading Lisner’s work, I oscillate between wicked laughter and the kind of tears only a transsexual feeling their way through language/the world knows. You’ll swoon while Ari takes notes!”

— imogen xtian smith, author of "stemmy things"

“‘ONE SHTICK PONY’’s poems are delicate blasts of mad word love, full of wit and certainty about the never-ending facts of uncertainty, which always seem to want us to regret life. Ari’s poems balance the internal and external demands of consciousness with verve and attention to detail. They get the fantastic and the enigmatic to move in together. In their exuberance and shapeliness of scale they make for the opposite of regretting life.”

— Anselm Berrigan, poetry editor, The Brooklyn Rail

“‘ONE SHTICK PONY’ unabashedly places the self in relation to cultural and geographical references. Lisner moves from dry one-liner to devastating juxtaposition: ‘BEANIE BABY / GAY BIRD / COCOA ROASTED’ to ‘ALLERGY SEASON / CUT FINGER/ URGENT CARE/ BLAST DOWN MYRTLE.’ I’m perfectly at home in Ari Lisner’s NYC—in those brief, delimiting moments where you might want to hide behind a tree, but don’t: ‘It is still me / Under the world’s biggest golf umbrella / Waiting to talk modular solutions.’ I’m a huge fan.”

— Amy Lawless, author of “Broadax” and “My Dead”