Reviews at Contemporary Poetry Review https://www.cprw.com Resuscitating Poetry Criticism Fri, 10 Aug 2018 02:25:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Ahead Was Silence: Matthew Buckley Smith on Louise Glück https://www.cprw.com/ahead-was-silence-matthew-buckley-smith-on-louise-gluck https://www.cprw.com/ahead-was-silence-matthew-buckley-smith-on-louise-gluck#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2015 20:43:05 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=4102 Reviewed: Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014.

Reading a good poem by Louise Glück is like taking a slap to the face in a large, cold bathroom.… continue reading...

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Of Man & Beast: Rick Joines reviews Mark Wunderlich https://www.cprw.com/of-man-beast-rick-joines-reviews-mark-wunderlich https://www.cprw.com/of-man-beast-rick-joines-reviews-mark-wunderlich#respond Fri, 13 Mar 2015 19:49:27 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=4089 Mark Wunderlich is a poet of remarkable skill and range. His best poems are lyrical observations of the shared essence of man and of beast, of their taste for brutality, and of their struggles with the cruelties of nature and of one another.… continue reading...

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Dancing In Borrowed Time: Bill Coyle on Andrew Sofer https://www.cprw.com/dancing-in-borrowed-time-bill-coyle-on-andrew-sofer https://www.cprw.com/dancing-in-borrowed-time-bill-coyle-on-andrew-sofer#respond Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:40:40 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=3733 Reviewed: Wave by Andrew Sofer. Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2010. 63 pages, $14.00

 

The epigraph to Andrew Sofer’s debut collection of poetry comes from Yehuda Amachai—“And for the sake of remembering  / I wear my father’s face over mine”—and it could hardly be more apt.… continue reading...

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A Variety of Courage: John Foy on Gerry Cambridge’s Notes for Lighting a Fire https://www.cprw.com/a-variety-of-courage-john-foy-on-gerry-cambridges-poetry https://www.cprw.com/a-variety-of-courage-john-foy-on-gerry-cambridges-poetry#comments Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:57:54 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=3698  

If lighting a fire on a winter night is a way of staying alive, then so, one feels, was the writing of the poems in Gerry Cambridge’s new book, Notes for Lighting a Fire.… continue reading...

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All Messed Up: G.M. Palmer on Matthew Dickman https://www.cprw.com/all-messed-up-g-m-palmer-on-matthew-dickman https://www.cprw.com/all-messed-up-g-m-palmer-on-matthew-dickman#respond Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:35:22 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=3528 Reviewed: Mayakovsky’s Revolver by Matthew Dickman. Norton, 2012.

Shot full of suicides, clichés, and sex, Matthew Dickman’s Mayakovsky’s Revolver is a collection of poems not unlike A Confederacy of Dunces—a mediocre work made important by personal tragedy. … continue reading...

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The Moving Scene: The Poetry of Descriptions https://www.cprw.com/the-moving-scene-the-poetry-of-descriptions https://www.cprw.com/the-moving-scene-the-poetry-of-descriptions#respond Fri, 28 Sep 2012 19:53:21 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=3458 In one of the great misreadings of one poet by another, John Keats complained to his publisher that, in the poetry of John Clare, “the Description too much prevailed over the Sentiment.”… continue reading...

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A Claptrap Canon: On the Modern Canadian Poets Anthology by Zachariah Wells https://www.cprw.com/a-claptrap-canon-on-the-modern-canadian-poets-anthology-by-zachariah-wells https://www.cprw.com/a-claptrap-canon-on-the-modern-canadian-poets-anthology-by-zachariah-wells#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:39:01 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=3232  

Anthologies, particularly those dedicated to presenting the poetry of a particular stretch of geopolitical space-time, are, by necessity, Procrustean beds. Thousands of poets producing work over many decades get pruned to a mere few dozen names.… continue reading...

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Monsters All the Way Down: Bill Coyle on Bruce Taylor https://www.cprw.com/monsters-all-the-way-down-bill-coyle-on-bruce-taylor https://www.cprw.com/monsters-all-the-way-down-bill-coyle-on-bruce-taylor#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:15:40 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=3149 Reviewed: No End in Strangeness: New and Selected Poems by Bruce Taylor. Cormorant Books, 2011.

 

There’s a marvelous description in Book X of Paradise Lost of the astronomical and climatological changes that accompany the Fall, and of the beginnings of predation among the animals.  … continue reading...

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A Neglected Master in Our Midst: Bill Coyle on Daryl Hine https://www.cprw.com/a-neglected-master-in-our-midst-bill-coyle-on-daryl-hine https://www.cprw.com/a-neglected-master-in-our-midst-bill-coyle-on-daryl-hine#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:38:06 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=3001 Reviewed:

Recollected Poems by Daryl Hine. Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2009. 246 pages.

& by Daryl Hine. Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2010. 112 pages.

 

When Daryl Hine’s Recollected Poems was published in 2009 it marked something of a comeback for a poet who in the mid 1990s had turned his back on the publishing industry and begun posting his new poems on a website, through which he also accepted donations.… continue reading...

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Too Cool for School: G. M. Palmer on Broetry https://www.cprw.com/too-cool-for-school-g-m-palmer-on-broetry https://www.cprw.com/too-cool-for-school-g-m-palmer-on-broetry#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:21:23 +0000 http://www.cprw.com/?p=2894 Reviewed: Broetry by Brian McGackin. Quirk Books, 2011. $12.95

Broetry’s title jumps into a spot your mind didn’t know was there. Sure, you know “bros” and you know “poetry,” and it somehow seems more than natural for a book called Broetry to appear in your hands.… continue reading...

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