Louis Jenkins preparation

Louis Jenkins's poems look like prose, on his website he even admits that his poems are prose. He doesn't capitalize the beginning of each line. Jenkins's poems aren't all about nature and transcendentalism like many poets, instead he talks more about football, CDs,cars, and fish. These manly objects of everyday life allow Jenkins to engage his thoughts to many people. I also noticed in some of the audio recordings of his poems, that he is quite funny, and it seems like he thinks of some of these lines in his poems like he's a stand-up comedian. I really liked the poems "Football" and "Fish Out of water" because they're pretty funny, and because they change topics like Jenkins' is telling us a story. I really liked how Jenkins' mainly talks about common manly topics, fishing, cars and football, and dress shoes. These poems are about everyday things that every man can connect to easily. In the poem "Football" I espescially liked the lines "I take the snap from the center, fake to the right, fade back.../I've got protection. I've got a receiver open downfield.../What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a shoe,/ a man's brown leather oxford." I enjoyed this line because i used to play quarterback and it reminded me of my football days, and it also reminded me of my dad. I can definitely see my dad saying "What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a shoe, a man's / brown leather oxford." Overall this poem jumps around from topic to topic, from eating pancakes, playing football, dress shoes, corn syrup vs maple syrup etc. I also noticed that in many of his poems, he has a real life experience, or moral in each one of his stories and this line conveys that statment perfectly "One has certain responsibilities, / one has to make choices. This isn't right and I'm not / going to throw it." In the poem "Fish Out of water" my interpretation was it's hard to recognize a good thing before it's gone. I feel as if the fish wasn't really the focus of the story... maybe some sort of a prop representing the moral of the story. This poem seems to be about regret. Having swam so far upstream only to be pulled back downstream. It tells a story of distractions from what's really the most important. How a large thing (a problem, for example) can get in the way of the things which should be paid more attention to like his wife, his children and how he screwed up his relationship with them but he never disrupted his relationship with the fish.