O, Body / Dan “Sully” Sullivan / 2024
I somehow ended up at the Green MIll Poetry Slam last Sunday, the original poetry slam hosted by Marc Smith, and lo and behold, a long lost friend Sully was featuring. It was a joy to see him in his element, getting ruckus with an audience for tender poems about fatphobia, family, and Chicago. I wouldn’t reduce the poems in O, Body to tavern poems, however. What’s awesome about the range of Sully’s craft is the same poem that might be a real loud one on stage can also be a sweet, gentle one on the page. O, Body offers a rich field to folks interested in writing about fat and masculinity. The poems slide between moments of insecurity and moments of deep presence within the body. In O, Body, Sully wields craft without taking himself too seriously, sidestepping the main character syndrome of so much contemporary poetics for poems that focus on family and the home we create for ourselves. In this way, Sully helps me laugh, not take myself so damn seriously, and focus on things that matter most. 4 out 5.