There is room in this twittering world for some oddly resonant deadpan absurdity, especially when it's concise and readable...You'll want to put this book down, but you probably won't.-- "Library Journal (review of "Lovely, Raspberry")"
Aaron Belz is the Comic of the Apocalypse. Were you expecting a Horseman? Getting ready to be repeatedly disabused.--Rae Armantrout
Aaron Belz's poetry reminds us that poetry should be bright, friendly, surprising, and totally committed to everything but itself. Reading him is like dreaming of a summer vacation and then taking it.--John Ashbery
Belz embraces narrative, brevity, down-to-earth diction, and slapstick. His approach resembles the New York School's lighter side, where Ashbery's use of Popeye in a poem evokes pop art and O'Hara's conversational tone disarms the reader to open him up for heavier material that follows--Jason Labbe "Boston Review"
I would love to quote you a few lines from Aaron Belz' Soft Launch--how he rhymes 'Greenland' with 'what could have beenland, ' for example, or rushes to the defense of Scott Fitzgerald--but that would give away the whole thing: the punchlines, the puns, the wry twists, the lemon twists, the twists of fate, and the fate of the known universe. It's all here, as a delicious set of inside jokes, like a Starbucks among the stars or a brat inside a bratwurst. The play within this play is what makes it playful. But also full. And delicious. Like a cup of tea that might scald you if you drink it too fast. Take little sips. Don't burn your lips. This poetry is hot, I'm warning you.--D. A. Powell