I’m not gonna lie to you.  I am not a huge fan of poetry.

Most poetry hurts my brain and makes me want to curl up in the fetal position and cry for it to stop. And when I hear poetry buffs wax poetic on their favorite verse-spinners, I wonder, “What am I missing?”

There are exceptions. Love Bukowski. Kinda like Auden. Oh, I do really like Shel Silverstein. My tastes tilt toward simple, coarse, or child-like writing. Like my own prose, I suppose.

But this week, I found another poet whose words sustain my attention and – dare I say – entertain me.

His name is Donato Mancini. The soft-spoken Vancouver (B.C.) poet released his newest anthology, Buffet World (Amazon.com) this week. UW Bothell Professor Joe Milutis hosted a right-convivial gathering in honor of Mancini’s latest publication, which is chock-full of hilarious statistics and observations about modern food and culture.

Here’s a snippet from ‘Remote Shack’:

1 large

soft pretzel weighs about the same

as 40 ruby-throated hummingbirds.

current annual US salt-snack consumption

measured in hummingbirds

is 922,373,548,885.5