Within the realm of narrative poetry, Anders Carlson-Wee’s second full-length book features two purposefully unemployed, dumpster-diving male best friends, who live at the fringes of American consumer culture in a nondescript apartment, and embody a sort of DIY punk rock esthetic of not working and living off the abundance tossed into dumpsters. Told through characters in a theatrical fashion, these lyric monologues never directly address the motives, so maybe they have anti-consumer ideologies or maybe they’re young and adrift. The two best friends are not identified as punk rock by music taste, dress, etc. According to Carlson-Wee whom I saw read these poems in October 2023, he himself lived a bit this way in his life, primarily to work less and devote himself to his poetry craft, he said. His dedication shows, especially as a dramatic monologist and through subtle plainspoken poetics enhancing tender moments.
Back to Disease of Kings, this series of lyric dramatic monologues tell the story of two twenty-something male roommates and besties who live at society’s fringes. Their free verse monologues are interspersed with spun yarns from a few colorful strangers who stay at the narrator’s AIRBNB when the other roommate, “North,” goes north to make money in Alaska for a summer, to fish for “kings.” These strangers would have to be colorful, because who else would stay at a twenty-something’s barebones apartment as an Airbnb, and eat bed-and-breakfast fair fished out of dumpsters? This poet’s a talent dramatist, and these guest appearances of people often on the margins of family and careers also enhance the book’s wryly comical, oddball atmosphere.
Back to North, the non-narrator co-hero, he means king crabs, in Alaska, which the narrator calls “kings.” This is quite in line with the poet’s charming, colloquial style in giving his characters life through quirks of diction. Anders Carlson-Wee also has a knack for subtle poetics, featuring interspersed rhyming, strategic enjambment and other linguistic concordances, within a plainspoken poetic voice that permits these dramatic monologues to feel real, yet sculpted. The technique of narrative poetry if defined from the Disease of Kings might add up to line breaks rather than paragraphs, virtuoso economy of language, atmospheric climaxes over plot, and a story told across poetic vignettes. What it does not often add up to here is memorable epiphanies or even keepsake phrases, which for me, leaves longing for the memorable concision of poetry. In Western culture, meter arose as a mnemonic, after all. This said, the characters stick with you like a big dinner. Anders Carlson-Wee should try his hand at plays and screenplays too, because he’s an engaging reader on the stage and writerly portraitist.
When North comes back from his summer in Alaska, North says to his narrator best friend that he plans to move up there permanently, to make money. This shocks his friend, whose name I did not quite catch while reading this breeze of a book. North then reminds the narrator that he comes from nothing. North has to care sometimes for his alcoholic homeless father when his father shows up, which the dad does in one or two poems. The narrator appears to be the son of a preacher, which can be gleaned from a few poems. The narrator’s Dad helps him out. So, the book touches upon the plot point that North is a poor young man not sure yet how to make it, while the narrator is someone who’s fled an unhappy middle class intact family. This divergence is not further mined, but it’s an intriguing and resonate situation. Anders Carlson-Wee is a young poet who paints a scene, but unlike for instance Jericho Brown’s 2020 Pulitzer-winning The Tradition, he doesn’t dive into the conflict, the meaning, the wound, the resolution.
Disease of Kings does offer an atmospheric story of twenty-something friendship among two guys somewhat alone in the world, and one that’s quite touching. The book’s title refers to gout, which was supposedly a medieval disease borne by those with the wealth to be gluttons. So the title indicates the author finds his characters misusing their freedom, their safety outside of a warzone or failed government, but at the same time, the non-narrator who moves to Alaska to work has no family to support him, no home to return to, and so his privilege is limited, exists because there is opportunity, and is relative.
During these poems, the narrator notes: “Isn’t that the secret indulgence / of friendship: being near what you can / never be,” in the poem, “Listening to North in the Morning.” The breaking of the line at “can / never be,” emphasizing that valiance, is emblematic of the numerous tiny craft choices in these poems. The narrator loves North. In these poems, it’s platonic. It seems North will move to Alaska and make and save up money, and so the book ends as a tale of a year of sorts, a window tinted with nostalgia.
Thinking back again to narrative poetry and the lyric poetry of Jericho Brown, Carlson-Wee’s approach even if written in short free verse reminds me of Tennessee Williams, the playwright, in the vividness of these oddball characters who are at conflict with the world, and of course, themselves. These slices of life feel real. These poems went down smooth. They left me wanting more.
Disease of Kings, by Anders Carlson-Wee. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, October 2023. 112 pages. $26.95, hardcover.
G.H. Mosson is the author of two books and three chapbooks of poetry, including Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time (Finishing Line Press 2019). His poetry has appeared in The Tampa Review, The Evening Street Review, Smartish Pace, and The Hollins Critic, and been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize. He has an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and an MFA in poetry from New England College. An attorney and writer, Mr. Mosson enjoys raising his children, hiking, and literary endeavors. For more, seek ghmosson.com.
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
Heavy Feather Review 
Leave a comment