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thefearlessfrock's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
caitlinlidae's review
DNF 10%
I enjoyed it but it wasn't grabbing me fully. Need to try it again.
I enjoyed it but it wasn't grabbing me fully. Need to try it again.
rdoose's review
4.0
Favorites: "A Woman Shopping" by Anne Boyer, "Notes Towards a Race Riot Scene" by Bhanu Kapil, "Rape Joke" by Patricia Lockwood, "Birthweights" by Chris McCabe, "Other Things" by Alvin Pang, "Conversations About Home (a the Deportation Centre)" by Warsan Shire, "Via Negativa" by Jane Monson, "Edith" by Sophie Robinson, "Blue Dog" by Luke Kennard, "Neglected Knives" by Kristin Omarsdottier, "Christopher Robin" by Czeslaw Milosz, "Return to Harmony 3" by Agha Shahid Ali, "In Love with Raymond Chandler" by Margaret Atwood, "Chekhov: A Sestina" by Mark Strand, "reading" by joanne burns, "Honey" by James Wright, "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche, "Goodtime Jesus" by James Tate, "A Caterpillar" by Robert Bly, "The Wild Rose" by Ken Smith, "A Case" by Gael Turnbull, "Strayed Crab" by Elizabeth Bishop, "Letters to James Alexander" by Jack Spicer, "Where the Tennis Court Was" by Eugenio Montale, "Love Letter to King Tutankhamun" by Dulce Maria Loynaz, "Snow" by Lu Xun, "A Day" by Rabindranath Tagore, "Tired" by Fenton Johnson, "London Notes" by Jessie Dismorr, "The Disciple" by Oscar Wilde, "The Master" by Oscar Wilde, "Windows" by Charles Baudelaire
aceface's review
4.0
My main attraction to this book was the form of the prose poem itself. I'd been shown a few and come across some in the past, but I felt like I needed to come to grips with what they are and how they work when they're working best. This book was definitely a help in that search.
The introduction doesn't give any clear definitions, but I think that was helpful in some respects - it just gave me the push to get into it, read through them and find my own definition.
The simplest definition of a prose poem I can find is 'a poem where there are no line breaks or stanzas - paragraphs take their place.' When coming across one of the poems in this book that was really working, its layout and form seemed incidental; they took the backseat while the language did the work.
There were definitely some poems in here that were tough to get through. Some were boring, monotonous, totally uninspiring (some missing the mark of the poetic so far that they made it into the territory of 'bad prose') but I don't mind that, since they were outshined by some true gems. I feel like that's the case with any anthology, and you just have to move through and find what works best for you in that moment.
Some of my favourites were -
'The End of Days' by Golan Haji
'The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter' by Mark Strand
'Kuchh Vakya' by Udayan Vajpeyi
'Hammer and Nail' by Naomi Shihab Nye
'The Dogs' by Yves Bonnefoy
'Cloistered' by Seamus Heaney
'it' by Inger Christensen
'Clock' by Pierre Riverdy
'Around the Star's Throne' by Hans Arp
'The Pleasures of the Door' by Francis Ponge
'In Praise of Glass' by Gabriela Mistral
'Winter Night' by Georg Trakl
and
'From the Waters of Babylon' by Emma Lazarus
I'd also highly recommend the Rimbaud, Turgenev, Baudelaire and Bertrand selections that close the book.
(I found it funny that most of my favourites were translations. I'll definitely be checking out some of those authors.)
All in all, I feel that this is a good book on the whole. There's plenty that I don't love in it, which is OK, but there are some real treasures in here that truly make up for it.
The introduction doesn't give any clear definitions, but I think that was helpful in some respects - it just gave me the push to get into it, read through them and find my own definition.
The simplest definition of a prose poem I can find is 'a poem where there are no line breaks or stanzas - paragraphs take their place.' When coming across one of the poems in this book that was really working, its layout and form seemed incidental; they took the backseat while the language did the work.
There were definitely some poems in here that were tough to get through. Some were boring, monotonous, totally uninspiring (some missing the mark of the poetic so far that they made it into the territory of 'bad prose') but I don't mind that, since they were outshined by some true gems. I feel like that's the case with any anthology, and you just have to move through and find what works best for you in that moment.
Some of my favourites were -
'The End of Days' by Golan Haji
'The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter' by Mark Strand
'Kuchh Vakya' by Udayan Vajpeyi
'Hammer and Nail' by Naomi Shihab Nye
'The Dogs' by Yves Bonnefoy
'Cloistered' by Seamus Heaney
'it' by Inger Christensen
'Clock' by Pierre Riverdy
'Around the Star's Throne' by Hans Arp
'The Pleasures of the Door' by Francis Ponge
'In Praise of Glass' by Gabriela Mistral
'Winter Night' by Georg Trakl
and
'From the Waters of Babylon' by Emma Lazarus
I'd also highly recommend the Rimbaud, Turgenev, Baudelaire and Bertrand selections that close the book.
(I found it funny that most of my favourites were translations. I'll definitely be checking out some of those authors.)
All in all, I feel that this is a good book on the whole. There's plenty that I don't love in it, which is OK, but there are some real treasures in here that truly make up for it.
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