01/01/1985
“Like a ventriloquist, in Ukelele Music, Reading intermittently assumes the voice of an obsequious charwoman named Viv, trying to cadge some money from her master, and at other times that of a chronicler of gruesome naval battles and mishaps. What the seemingly unrelated spheres have in common is the dire state of ‘H. sap.,’ or homo sapiens, examined in gruesome detail. His obsession with the gross has led British reviewers to call Reading’s humor ‘too black’–a criticism ushered into his poems, along with a reply: ‘What do they think they’re playing at, then, these Poetry Wallahs?’ The poet proclaims that, ‘this is the Age Of The Greatly Bewildered Granny & Grandad, / shitlessly scared by the bad, mindless and jobless and young.'” —Publisher’s Weekly, August 1994