Those mourning the death of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Louise Glück last month may, or may not, take solace in that there is a new poetic act in town, in the form of the actress Megan Fox. Fox, who is engaged to the bellicosely named musician Machine Gun Kelly, announced the project on Instagram (naturally), saying, “These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence. I’ve spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body aches from carrying the weight of their sins.” Only the cynical might observe that Sylvia Plath offered a rather pithier summation of the same idea at the end of her poem “Daddy,” when she concluded, “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

Fox’s debut collection of poetry, Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, is, inevitably, already a bestseller: The combined power of BookTok, Instagram and Fox’s screen celebrity has produced what will probably be the highest-selling collection of poetry published in the United States this year, or in recent memory. Eat your tender hearts out, Ocean Vuong and Amanda Gorman. This slender collection will connect with many multiples of readers compared to what you could ever hope for. Yet Fox, a veteran of the rapacious shark tank of Hollywood, will know that critics of all hues will be sharpening their scalpels in an attempt to make this her first and last book.
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