 So, recently I feel like there's been an uptake in celebrities doing poetry books, but let it be known that Bobanham was first. Hi. So, we have a lot to discuss. When inside blew up and Bobanham became even more successful than he already was, I felt the need, as anyone does, when they are, you know, before the curve, to proclaim that I was here first. I was here first. I have loved Bobanham since I was about 13, 14. I feel like the comedy he was making at the time, so when Bobanham started becoming even more popular, I realized hang on a second, he's got a fucking book and I've read it. Is it a coincidence? Is it a coincidence? I ask you. Is it a coincidence? So this is Bobanham's poetry book. It is called Egghead, or You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone. It's kind of like absurd poetry, but I have not reread this. It was 13 or 14. Now, let it be known that when I was 13 or 14 and reading this, I thought, this is the best poetry that has ever been written. This is outstanding. This is a new work of art. I didn't quite feel the same re-reading it. Yes, this is a concern and a worry. So in this video, we're going to break down everything about this book, all my thoughts about Egghead or You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone by Bobanham. Now, we should be aware that obviously I have a bias in this. I have a bias in that I really like Bobanham, and I loved this when I was younger, but the feelings have changed, honey, the feelings have changed. So we're going to separate this video into two parts, the good, but we're going to start with the bad. I feel like this book is trying to be too clever. A lot of the poems went over my head. Now, this could be because it's referencing things that I don't know the reference to. It could be that I am dumb, but I genuinely feel like this bitch is trying to be clever for no reason. For no reason. Let's have examples, shall we? I'm backing up all my points of examples. Listen, did you not expect this to have receipts? So anyway, literally the first poem, the first poem is called Effortless. Writing poetry is effortless. High for piss. Yes, I know I said heifer wrong. Leva kiss, Trevor Chris. Whoops, got a little lightheaded. What does that mean? What does it mean? Like, am I dumb or is this dumb? What does that mean? Another one called disembodied heads. It's quite long. I don't know if you want to read all this. Served heads get all the attention. Poor old disembodied heads cry the townspeople, but what about the severed bodies? What about that poor old disembodied head, poor old dismembered body? The heads roll around moping all day. The bodies work in the mines without a union. It's a no brainer for the no brainers. Give them some respect. They harvest our coal for Christ's sake. I'm just confused. I'm not going to lie to you. I am just very confused. With these examples, is it me or is it the book? I don't know. But either way, I feel like it doesn't work. I feel like it's trying to be like, oh my God, my poetry is not only funny, it's clever. It's clever. And then, okay. Also, before we get any further into this, I do just want to caveat this with, I've never written poetry and I probably never will. And by Burnham is obviously much more successful than me. And I love all his other work. So this isn't, you know, we're not punching down here. We're punching up to someone whose other work I love. So this isn't a critique of him as a person. And this came out as we will discuss in 2013. So quite a while ago. Point two related to that. I feel like this has out of date humor. Not necessarily like problematic humor. Like, well, that's a few poems, but not overall. But a lot of it just feels like it's slightly out of date. The problem is, both Burnham's comedy has always been very relevant to the now, very time relevant. But the problem with that is that it gets old. So I think his comedy works so well, because it's always so poignant to what we are all experiencing at point in time. Perfectly evidenced with inside, you know? Like that is literally about the pandemic and the feelings that we had during the pandemic. And I don't know if we'll all necessarily feel the same way about it five, 10 years on, you know, once we've kind of moved out of that space and time. So he's not necessarily a critique of his kind of comedy because it works well in the present moment, which is kind of the most important thing. But it doesn't necessarily age well. But an example of this is Roses Are Great, Violets Are A Different Shader Great, Let's Go Chase Cars, which is a dog's poem. And I just feel like this kind of comedy is kind of from that early, you know, 2012, 2013 kind of internet tumbler comedy where it's like, oh my god, I'm cranky, I'm getting different. You know? But it's not necessarily comedy that works now. I think my third critique is my biggest critique of this. And it genuinely is kind of a critique of the whole book. So I struggled to find individual examples of it, because it kind of is just the overwhelming feeling of the whole book. But this book feels like half-baked ideas, which is ironic because the title is You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone. And it does all kind of just feel like ideas. A lot of this book feels like unfinished jokes for his stand-up show. It feels like little ideas, little tidbits he had for a piece in his stand-up show for maybe a song or a larger kind of bit that didn't go anywhere. And so they ended up in this book. There's one about like a guy sitting on a unicorn's head, like he thinks he's sitting on a horse's head, it turns out it's a unicorn's head, ha ha ha. Another one called Gangley. I'm a gangley kid, one of those drunk marionettes, one of those baby giraffes with inner ear syndrome, a flailing stork in high winds, a stilted freak. I am an easel, not symbolically, structurally. I attempt to dance and become a tornado of elbow. That's not a poem. That's not, well, who am I to say that? But it's not. There's like 200 poems in this. This is 240 pages long, a poem is very rarely longer than one page. So there's at least like 200 poems in this. And there's like only 15 that I thought were good. The rest are just this blur of like, what was that trying to say? It wasn't trying to say anything. Like, I feel like it's kind of pointless, a lot of this book. And finally for the bad section, I cannot read any of these out because I think I'll get demonetised. But the sex poems didn't work for me. They didn't work. And listen, I'm not approved. They did not work. And here's the thing, when I was 13, 14, I thought these were funny. I remember thinking, I remember thinking in a certain poem, I don't think I can even say the name because I think I will get demonetised. It's, I have relations with a derogatory word for women. There's one about father, time and mother nature getting on. They just, none of them work. They're not funny. Like it feels a little bit like ha, sex is funny. And I feel like you see maybe with Inside with like the song Sexting, a kind of evolution of this kind of humour. It feels very much in its early stages in this book, kind of using sex and sex jokes as a cheap laugh. And it does reappear throughout the book. And I'm like, listen, it wasn't funny the first time. It wasn't funny the second time. It wasn't funny the 10th time. Okay, so let's get into the good stuff because there is some of it. Some of it is, some of it is good. Some of it I enjoy. A lot of what this book is is silly fun poetry. It's stupid. Earlier I was saying some of it is trying to be too clever, but a lot of it is just stupid and kind of knows it's stupid. Convenience was one of the first poems I liked. It says, I would do anything for you if convenient. I would move a mountain for you if that mountain could be moved with a button or with a lever that wasn't too cold to the touch. I would give you the moon if I could. You would love the moon. You'd show it off to everyone and not give a fuck that you've now severely damaged our ecosystem by disrupting the tides. Maybe a nice look in the mirror is an order, Missy. Like that's just stupid. You know, it's just stupid. It's fun. I just feel like a lot of this is silly, stupid, but knows it's stupid. It isn't trying to be the next rupee core really deep, deep poetry. It's just trying to be silly and I can appreciate that. Now the best thing about this book, and I think there's only about four poems like this in the whole book, but it is when Bo is using poetry to discuss words and the uniqueness of words and kind of celebrating language and all the different ways that language can be used in poetry to evoke feelings and the way that individual words make us feel. There's literally four poems like this in the whole book, but whenever I came across one I literally cheered because that is what is best about this book. Every time I got to a poem like this in the book, that's what we've been waiting for. It's what we wanted all along. I feel like they're the poems as well where he, it feels like he likes them the most. Like they're the poems that I can tell. I think he's proud to stop and I think there's a lot of this kind of stupid stuff to fill out the book. But if more of it could have been this genuinely interesting look at how we use words, I would have fucking eaten it up. Let's have an example. This one, it doesn't really work as well me reading it out to you but I'm going to anyway. But the whole point of this one called magic is how you read words in your head. So it says read this to yourself. Read it silently. Don't move your lips. Don't make a sound. Listen to yourself. Listen without hearing anything. What a wonderfully weird thing, huh? Now make this part loud. Scream it in your mind. Drown everything out. Now hear a whisper. A tiny whisper. Now read this next line with your best crotchety old man voice. Hello there, sonny. Does your down in my post office? Awesome. Who was that? Whose voice was that? It sure wasn't yours. How do you do that? How must be magic? So I feel like that one works best obviously when I'm not reading it out loud but when you're reading it in your head and it really opens your eyes to kind of the imagination that we have in our head and are able to recreate these poems and language in this really wonderful way in our head. Another one of my favorite ones was I Eat Words. It says I eat words, delicious words. I gobble the words that you make. Words like rod taste like turds but billow takes the cake. I stuff my face with afterwards and wash it down with hush. Dessert must wait till afterwards like hunch or flack or crush and my dessert won't be dessert. That word is tough to chew. I'll have a word that's sweet and cared like pony nip or blue. I just, oh I love that poem. That is probably my favorite poem in the whole book. Do you see what I mean when he's celebrating language and our imagination and how humanity has managed to come up with like these words that sound beautiful? I just think it's so so interesting and the other poems that really made me sit up and think. So they're literally four poems I think in the whole book like that out of 200 but I really appreciated them and really enjoyed them. There's also a lot of short like three line poems in this that I think actually do work well. This is where the just thoughts, just ideas work. There are some parts where the idea doesn't need to be extended beyond like 10 words and it just works and you get it but there's also a lot of them that don't work but there's a lot that do. One for example called toast. I'd like to propose a toast. Sourdough pumpkin bread. Thoughts? Like it's stupid but it works in that format. Another one called Cyclops. The women ran screaming when the Cyclops blinked. If only they'd known he'd actually winked. Like it's stupid and it's silly. They do work in my opinion. Some of them. There's a lot that don't but when it works I think it's just kind of like a little bit of fun, a little bit of joy and lastly there is some really kind of sentimental touching poems. There's not a lot of them. They're kind of like fewer far between but when he does it I feel like he does it well. It's kind of a moment that makes you go oh. For example there's one called Perfect that says I love you just the way you are but you don't see you like I do. You shouldn't try so hard to be perfect. Trust me perfect should try to be you and listen that is kind of like derivative. It's a very well worn concept but I think it's still cute and touching. Overall the vast majority of this book was disappointing to me. I would say at least like 150 of the poems, at least three quarters of it I didn't really enjoy or not that I didn't enjoy but I just found them slightly missing of the mark but then a quarter of them I really really loved and I still found funny so I don't think this is a terrible book. I don't think this is a terrible poetry book but it does overall feel like half-faked ideas for his stand-up show. There's nothing wrong with that and obviously at this point you know this is now holy shit this is almost published nine years ago almost and eight nine years ago comedy was very different what we found funny was very different and comedy in itself is something that ages not just by Burnham's comedy but comedy in general ages and doesn't say relevant forever so I don't think you can critique this as you would critique like a modern poetry book that has just come out and is trying to be relevant to the times. This isn't trying to be relevant to 2021 because it didn't know that 2021 existed so do I think this is a great poetry book? No but you know it's a poetry book by Burnham's published I'm not so you don't mind to talk. I don't I think if you like my Burnham I wouldn't necessarily recommend picking this up I think his older comedy sketches are still more relevant than this. Listen I loved it when it came out so that says something but it was kind of a bit of a strange reading experience. So there we have it that is my review I guess of Bo Burnham's poetry book I hope you enjoyed it I hope you enjoyed my thoughts a bit different than what I've usually done but I really enjoyed doing this um thank you to all my patrons of course like always you guys are wonderful and I appreciate you so so much and thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed the video you can check out more of my videos on the end screen if you're interested and I'll see you very very soon