FROM THE ORIGINAL 2007 EDITION: Composed primarily through the co-optation and recombination of internet search results, FAKE MATH is a poetic intervention into the ways the motive for profit structures our lives. Each poem exposes the fallacies, fake logics, and sheer idiocies that constrict our decision-making processes in terms of our art, industry, educational system, and our day-to-day lives, while questioning our tendency to resort to institutionalized social violence. FAKE MATH draws its inspiration from diverse sources from Marx to Freud, from Archimedes to Oprah, sending them all downstream on rapidly pulsating waves of schizophrenic glee and political gravity, often creating startling juxtapositions when mismatched ideas and images are torn from their original contexts. The effects are at once humorous and stomach-churning. Ultimately, these are poems about how we live, work, and play within larger structures of capitalism and how our attempts to move past these structures are largely failed attempts at rebellion, not real attempts at revolution.
FROM THE REVISED 2022 EDITION: “These are poems all about texture and voice. They tarry with the negative, the abject, and political, often in ways I didn’t entirely understand. In particular, they suggested a kind of ironic position taking towards a particular kind of white male toxicity whose discourse could be mashed up and lampooned. This appealed to me as a stupid, broken kid with a desire to fuck something up but with massive amounts of social anxiety weighing me down. I’m now convinced that irony doesn’t work as a critical pose, but I do think there’s something of value in many of these poems.”
The original edition is still available through Invisible Publishing
A revised edition is available for free as a PDF through Model Press
Ryan Fitzpatrick 