Matthew Guenette
American Busboy.
University of Akron Press, 2011. Akron series in poetry. 9781931968980 77 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.25" x 9.5", is bound in dark blue leatherette, with stamped silver lettering to spine and front cover. Book is new, still in shrinkwrap.
"In "American Busboy," a wry anti-mythology, the anti-hero busboy in an anonymous Clam Shack! tangles with the monotonous delirium of work, the indignities and poor pay of unskilled labor, the capricious deus ex machina of mean-spirited middle management, the zombified consumption of summer tourists, while jostling for the goddess-like attentions of waitresses and hostesses-all battered up in sizzlingly crisp wit and language, and deep-fried in a shiny glaze of surrealism. -Lee Ann Roripaugh