The Theory of the Loser Class

Jon Paul Fiorentino

160,-

We are all entitled to our own hyperbole,
especially you.

Montreal has made a fool of me
for the second last time.

I’m not suggesting we’re all losers
I’m insisting upon it.

If the Anthony Michael Hall character in The Breakfast Club wrote poems (and, deep down, you know that he did), they’d probably read a lot like The Theory of the Loser Class. Drawing on texts ranging from Thorstein Veblen’s groundbreaking The Theory of the Leisure Class to Star Wars (the nerd Bible) for inspiration, this carefully crafted suite of poems documents the tribulations and insecurities of everyone’s inner geek. Fiorentino maps the psychic territory of abjection across the shopworn spaces of suburban Winnipeg, where a landscape of aging strip malls, burned-out houses and living rooms littered with video-game consoles serves as a mirror to the inner states of urban ennui among the socially inept and the culturally vexed.

By turns compassionate, funny and filled with selfloathing, The Theory of the Loser Class is never without the possibility of redemption; ‘And if a loser falls,’ says the narrator of ‘Right in the Spine,’ ‘I feel it.’ ‘Fiorentino is in the midst of something grand.’ – The Globe and Mail

‘The lovely oddness and contextual grace of Hello Serotonin resonate long after you’ve finished reading – profusion of tantalizing questions and all.’ – Broken Pencil