Jeremiah, Ohio , Adam Sol

In his most recent book of poems, Adam Sol tells the story of the prophet Jeremiah’s return to Earth via Ohio.  Jeremiah rants and declaims on the Midwestern highway, where he finds a companion and scribe in grad school dropout Bruce. Jeremiah, Ohio traces the unlikely road trip of Jeremiah and Bruce from Ohio to New York City, through outlet malls, fast food joints, universities, and churches.  While reading Sol’s dazzlingly strange story and its inventive, playful form, I gladly suspended my disbelief and went along for the ride.

Each of the poems in Jeremiah, Ohio serves to advance the story, but the speakers (and corresponding styles and points of view) change.  Jeremiah’s voice is characterized by biblical diction and predictions of apocalypse: “Woe unto ye, corporate communicators!/ Behold the oily ends of your extended lunches!”  Jeremiah is made likeable by his interactions with Bruce, whose poems are more relaxed in form (and often arranged in lines of equal syllable length).  Bruce confesses that he feels that he’s “in the process of failing as a person,” and finds amusement and redemption in Jeremiah’s impassioned ranting.

Sol is clearly an expert in poetic form, and he references many traditional poetic and literary modes throughout the book (including the catalogue, dramatic monologue, and blues structure). One of the book’s most tender and quiet poems, “Villanelle for Jeremiah’s Son,” showcases Sol’s ability to mix heart-wrenching, uncommon emotion with the commonplace.  Through Jeremiah, Sol laments, “My only son had a scar on his cheek/ in the shape of a Nike swoosh./  I am wretched. I will not be consoled.”

Jeremiah, Ohio owes its power to Sol’s skill for relevant, exhilarating storytelling and his knack for pointing out and bringing together the absurd, disparate elements of modern culture.