HOW TO BECOME STUPID, by Peter Patapis

Poetry, chapbook, 16 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

HOW TO BECOME STUPID is a chapbook about becoming stupid. The poet-as-speaker who narrates this collection takes the idea literally, deciding he must surrender to the body in defiance of the brain. By becoming stupid, though, a window emerges within the speaker’s eye through which both a light and a new god appear.

Devoted to both the spiritual and the mundane, these poems write against the academy and instead beg once again for the holy—even amidst the roaring flames of our present hell. Loud and abrasive, but also reclusive and coy, HOW TO BECOME STUPID wonders where stupidity ends and awe begins.

Peter Patapis is a poet living in New York City. He is the author of the chapbooks Green Dream (Choo Choo Press, 2021) and An Incense Named Magenta (Choo Choo Press, 2024) and has taught creative writing at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.