Can't Beat the Price, by Sam Kerbel

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

The poems in Can’t Beat the Price are not riddles themselves but often take on the tone of a riddle, getting at something not quite being said. What we are doing most of the time, in other words. And when you realize this, you understand how hard it is to be human, and how much work there is to be done. And if one isn’t careful, you’ll succumb to a doom state. Perhaps you’ll think, am I the only one alive? Is everyone else walking around in a trance?

These poems are autobiographical to the extent they’re honest attempts at rendering the unconscious at work. The unconscious, surely, in legible form, heavily sifted. Though there are dreams here, and fears too.

We do live in a world “of exaggerated prejudices, of self-denials, and of partially romanticized regrets” (Vigo). In this spirit, these poems are presented as a pocket guide to giving oneself the time.

Sam Kerbel lives in New York, and grew up in Maryland, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Georgia. He was recently shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize.