by Peter Patapis '20
Published by Bottlecap Press (2024)
HOW TO BECOME STUPID is a chapbook about becoming stupid. The poet-as-speaker who narrates this collection takes the idea literally, deciding he must surrender to the body in defiance of the brain. By becoming stupid, though, a window emerges within the speaker’s eye through which both a light and a new god appear.
Devoted to both the spiritual and the mundane, these poems write against the academy and instead beg once again for the holy—even amidst the roaring flames of our present hell. Loud and abrasive, but also reclusive and coy, HOW TO BECOME STUPIDwonders where stupidity ends and awe begins.