Adam Robison and Other Poems

This painting was done by Shaun Preston in the spring of 2009.

Adam Robinson dressed up and sat in a lighted chair stillly while Shaun painted the underpainting.

Then Adam got mugged in broad daylight in downtown Baltimore, and the perpetrators smashed a bottle over his head. He had to cut off his hair a little (but no stitches were needed).

Now, since he didn't have hair, he didn't have to pose for the painting anymore. Shaun Preston finished the painting by looking at a photograph.

The actual painting is about 18" x 24". It hangs at Narrow House. It is characterized by layered brushwork, an interplay of light and shadow, not-so subtle color choices, and a strong chin.

Justin Sirois did the layout.

[Adam Robinson's] mix of classical and mundane references imbues lines like "There would be a pronounced lack/ Of throwing Nerf balls to paralytics/ In the basement" with more meaning than they have any right to have.
- Baltimore City Paper

This book is marvelous, genius fun.
- CAConrad

Robinson’s poetry hasn’t forgotten the reader. . . . These are sentiments that need spreading. And the universe knows that.
- Chris Heavener, Annalemma

Not only my favorite title of the year, but this is also a book I have been waiting to hold in my hands with great anticipation for quite some time - as a friend, yes, but more so in language glee. Adam can truly speak it in a way I have never heard anyone else speak. This is going to be one to drink milk in bed with
- Blake Butler, htmlgiant

From trompe l'oeil title to anomalous index, this is a book of pristine openings and closings, preoccupied with structure, literary convention, popular and intellectual culture, biography, genre and identity. Somewhat skeptically, it marks out a testing ground for poetry. And poetry, confident in those sparkling titles and last lines, jumps into the ring.
- Mairead Byrne

Adam Robinson’s accessible and erudite first book of poetry, Adam Robison and Other Poems, nimbly plays with the mutability of identity and naming. . . . A triumphant, accurate battle cry.
- Celeste Sollod, Reading Local: Baltimore

My happiest purchase of the year. And I just bought a really cool new bicycle.
- Arthur Q. Bryan

With its not-at-all-as-dumb-as-I-sound slang, all elbows humor, and pseudo-historical research, Adam Robinson's Adam Robison and Other Poems is as fun a book of poetry as I’ve read in awhile. A big plus: it has the first poem I’ve ever seen about Judas Priest.
- Mark Wallace

I dig the colloquialisms and the wordplay. I also like how [Robinson] can make a poem very funny and very sad at the same time.
- Pat King, Outsider Writers

Ian McKaye told me these poems unite a literary ensemble cast with a benevolent I AM. He told me that linguistic pioneering doesn't preclude a good story, and that no matter how meta things get, the characters on Robinson's bus are their own people and ravishing. He told me I'd wish I wrote 'em. Correctamundo Ian.
- Melissa Broder

There's a lot of brilliance here, from the haunting/hilarious somber cover portrait to the typo-ready title and finally, the poems. Robi(n)son likes to walk the garish line between high-brow intellect and low-brow dudeisms. I like the dudeisms best. All in all, this is a delicious book.
- Kevin Sampsell

One of the first things I noticed while reading Adam Robinson's poems was that he was either a really bright guy, or a very inquisitive one with access to Google or Wikipedia.
- Dan Wickett, Emerging Writers Network

By getting so much wrong, Robinson releases poetry’s pressure valve. Mistakes provoke the reader, make them winners with all their knowledge, make the book interesting, make them care about things. Perhaps that’s how it’s possible to learn about pollution based on a poem that uses the words “boy howdy,” “holy wow” and “broham.”
- Adam Robison, We Who Are About to Die

This book is a sure furthering of the American experiment of poetry. Pick whatever gigantor of colloquial you will and ARAOP is son, father, brother or cousin to him, her, and that.
- Joseph Young