Doggerel: Poems

The poetry of Betts (Redaction) continues to blur the lines between the personal and the universal. His are documents of personal experience and witness as testimony against systemic—and, particularly, carceral—American ills, powerfully political poems not only in subject matter but also as an assertion that the suffering of one person is the suffering of all. With his latest collection, Betts further erases the boundaries between the intimate and panoramic, and between himself and the reader. Even the collection’s title—“doggerel” is an old term for comic or poorly executed poetry—hints at a comfort between the two parties while playfully telegraphing a focus on the literally dog-centric poems within. Betts invokes canine friends as a powerful metaphor for the importance of life as an experience of collectivity. That he manages to execute this conceit without sacrificing any of his typical linguistic richness or thrilling intelligence only further proves that Betts is one of today’s finest poets.