Seek Treatment), Cohen s debut poetry collection
God I Feel Modern Tonight: Poems from a Gal About Town (Knopf, 2021) has just been released. Striking a careful balance between the poetic ( I love sex and I love before it /the double vodka soda leg touch ) and the playful ( going swimming is an amazing way/to stop being on your phone ), Cohen never ceases to entertain. I spoke with Catherine shortly after the book was published.
Gregg Shapiro: Your book
God I Feel Modern Tonight is subtitled
Poems from a Gal About Town. Were you a gal about town in (your native) Houston or did that come later?
There’s only one Catherine Cohen.
It’s something you realise about five minutes into watching her perform she’s just burped. “I’m sorry,” she says nonchalantly, “I literally can’t stop creating content.”
Comedian, poet and all-round spectacle, Cohen has made a name for herself through her intensely personal and yet highly relatable form of comedy. It’s a dizzying display of narcissism paired with her very own brand of insecurity. The result is something else.
Cohen is perhaps best-known for her songs, comedic observations about modern life from the perspective of a self-proclaimed “millennial renaissance woman.” With nothing but the sheer force of her charisma (and the ever-talented Henry Koperski on the keys), Cohen takes on the world, and no topic is off limits. There’s
The New York Times says, â
In & of Itself reframes familiar tropes like card tricks, vanishing objects and stupendous feats of mentalism to new ends. It is not often that a magic show makes you ponder not just the how, but the why.âÂ
NPRÂ does it with, âYou ll hearÂ
In & of Itself referred to as conceptual magic or interactive theater or a one-man show. Those things are all technically true, but they re desperately incomplete. I might describe it as a series of vignettes, punctuated by some basic sleight-of-hand, some card tricks, and two of the most extraordinary audience-involved sequences I ever expect to see. I don t understandâat allâhow either was done.â