My thanks to both NetGalley and ECW Press for this collection of poetry that draws familiar beats and sounds from the past to create new art for the hear [sic] and now.

Nothing speaks more about the current state of radio today than a random trip down the channels and hearing the same songs played on almost all the channels. Nothing speaks more about the current state of poetry than to see the same old names coming up the same amount of times, with nary a new poet discussed or quoted. The world is in a permanent stage of nostalgia. What one likes as a teen with ears and minds still fresh and full of optimism about what the world can be, is far different than what we are willing to give a chance too, when we realize the world is not what the songs or the poems we listened to promised. Everything new is not good, everything old was so much better. Very few people go you have to hear this new song, read this new poem, see this new thing. Manu just raise their fists to the sun, cursing the light and not wanting to see. Though they are missing quite a bit. More Songs the Radio Won't Play: Poems by poet and writer Stan Rogal are songs that might be familiar, from jukeboxes in diners, from boom boxes at school dances, from muscle cars passing by, but changed to create something new for our modern ears, and modern world.

Imagine hearing a cover band performing in front of a crowd, but this show is different. This performance is done like a cooking show on TV, where chefs are given ingredients, and 45 minutes to cook a meal. This band is given a song title, maybe get hummed a few words, and told to go out and rock the place. Rogal takes songs that are known, for love, teen angst, synth beats, how bad radio became in the 1980's and created something new with them. Sort of like the William Burroughs cut-up method, though Rogal adds far more than he cuts. Rogal goes to the heart of the song and changes the blood type, adding in historical, philosophical references, making poems, making stories, making art out of the past.

As with most poetry collections some hit, some miss, some soar, and some soar so high that the reader is left watching it go. I enjoyed the idea, and the much of the execution. This isn't some Weird Al or Doctor Dememto songs but something more. Art created from others fires, fussed with, polished, dirtied up in a few places. A collection full of imagination and respect, with a bit of rebellion anda hint of garage rock stank.

A really cool concept, but one I had trouble connecting with. I listened to the songs before reading the poems and discovered a few songs/bands I hadn't heard and will be checking out again. But the poetry collection itself felt disconnected.

A collection of poems based off of songs sounded like it would hit home for me but alas I wasn't really able to find this collection enjoyable. The premise is commendable and has a lot of potential but the poems felt disjointed and somewhat hollow. Surprisingly, a lot of the songs Rogal writes about ARE played on the radio. This felt very "old man shakes fist at damn young kids and their hip new songs" to me. Also the fact that Rogal listed "Baba O'Riley" by The Who as "Teenage Wasteland" baffles me. How can you be that into music and get the title of the song wrong!

Something I think is cool is the use of different types of poetry styles. Yes, this is a reason for that disjointed feeling, but at the same time the poem "Radio Ga Ga" being written in the Tuscan folk verse form rispetto is actually pretty cool.

My favorite poems are: "One Thing Leads to Another", "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", and "Radio Ga Ga."

This book of poems based on reinterpretations of old, popular songs was such a promising idea, and I was very excited to pick this one up as both a music and book lover. However, it fell flat for me. I found that I wasn't invested in it after the first couple poems and was just waiting for it to end.

I received an ARC from Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc!

While this was definitely a neat idea this one was not for me. With the right audience this may do well. I did not know majority of these songs so it did not have the intended effect on me.

Interesting concept of poems inspired by songs. I was not familiar with all the songs but I enjoyed the concept and the poetry.

I hadn't realized I've read Rogal before. In prose form. Several years ago, his novel, Comic, failed to make much if any of the impression, which is reflected in my review of it - it stands to point out, the only review to date on GR, despite the book being out for a minute.
Sure enough, my rating and review is the first now for this book.
And yet, such absence of conventional popularity hasn't stopped Rogal for creating more books or Canadian presses from publishing them. To be fair, it isn't that there's no talent there or no skill. It just that it takes more that talent and skill alone to write a compelling, interesting, enjoyable book.
This poetry collection, for instance, had a great idea behind it -a reinterpretation of popular songs. Rogal and his excellent vocabulary has done some interesting moody takes. But (and this may be partially due to the fact that this reader wasn't familiar with the majority of the songs used), the book just didn't sing on its own. It was clever but in a self-referential sort of way.
It stands to mention that poetry often doesn't work for me, or rather that it takes exceptional poetry to work for me, and therefor user mileage may vary here. But this review, as all my reviews, are meant to reflect a subjective reading experience, which was underwhelming. Thanks Netgalley.

This was super interesting! I’ve never read anything like what Stan Royal wrote in more songs the radio won’t play.

DNF I loves the idea and wanted to like this book a lot, but I couldn't connect with the poems. There were songs I was already familiar with like Sweet Dreams and Radio Ga Ga, but that made no difference. I guess this is too experimental for me and I'm not the kind of reader for this book.