I'm Sorry but None of This Is My Fault

Author: Michael Martin Shea

Publisher: Essay Press (2025)

“In Adorno’s modernism, the ‘totality of the social’ slips into the art-object, and steadies itself there, protected from discursive reductions. But what if the ‘art-object’s’ (in this case, the poem’s) innards start talking back to its confines, without fear or remorse? I’m sorry but none of this is my fault, the title of Michael Martin Shea’s new book, could not be more apt. With a fencing foil quickness, Shea brilliantly lacerates the boundaries of ideologically vetted poetics by stretching metonymic meaning just shy of the breaking point. The surprising social-psychological entanglements that are revealed make for some of hardest won hilarity of any poetry around.”

—Rodrigo Toscano