Reviews

Stillness of the World Before Bach: New Selected Poems by Lars Gustafsson

msand3's review against another edition

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2.0

This is the shoe-gazing of twentieth century poetry. (Literally! One poem, “Conversation Between Doubters,” is a meditation on a man gazing at his boots.) It is languid, introspective, and with darkly beautiful strings of words….but ultimately leaves one feeling empty (at best) and bored (at worst). The only redeeming feature of this book is the extraordinary photographs by Arthur Tress, which had me scrambling to add some of his photographic collections to my list of books to read. As for Gustafsson’s poetry? I have little desire to read more.
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