In this collection of poems, Shinder courageously explores men's fear of sexual intimacy using a personal, very private voice that whispers from the mire of lived human experience. In crisp, clean lines, the poems accurately convey the vulnerability, longing, and shame associated with the fear of human contact and communication. Sometimes achingly sensual, though never sentimental, Shinder treats this subject with daring and originality.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The deliberate poems in Shinder's second volume of verse concentrate on masculinity, love and hetero sex accordingly they are also interested in embarrassment; in fathers, sons and families; in men's ideas about women; in self-discovery; and in self-inculpation. The poems' quiet language, slow pace and emotional pitch, like their short-lined, triadic stanzas, will remind many readers of Stephen Dunn's verse, and perhaps of Raymond Carver's. Those writers' fans may appreciate Shinder's frankness: "I'm afraid/ if I come/ I'll sound like someone// I don't know," he begins one poem; the next asks "Oh God of paradise,// whom/ have I ever loved/ except through me?" Some poems vouchsafe epiphanies; other chronicle absurd and touching sexual failures. Other still ask questions about love: "Have we ever arrived// in the arms of someone/ who wasn't lost/ from the start?" The deliberate clarity and accessibility tend toward stabs at Carver-esque profundity, and the results are often boring, and on occasion silly: "Ocean. Irene.// We are ocean./ Night. Irene./ We are night." Brought together from magazine publication, the poems seem here to be too much like one another, and too restricted in their forms and tones, to back up the best of the lot. While pitched as an antidote to the insistent (if now somewhat muted or ironized) chest-beating of most male-centered narrative verse, the poems end up bolstering the very categories they seek to question. (Apr.) Forecast: Shinder is the founder and director of the YMCA National Writer's Voice, director of the Sundance Institute's writing program, a writing teacher at Bennington College and New School University, and an indefatigable anthologist (he is series editor of the Best American Movie Writing and of a series of Harcourt collections of family poems) so this book should reach a variety of readers interested in his work.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"I love these poems for their unbearable honesty. I love what these poems say and I love the form in which they say it. Jason Shinder is one of our finest new poets."—Gerald Stern
"I don't know of any male poet who approximates the honest terror and desire, the sense of shock that runs through these poems . . . It is offensive to say that these poems are brave and yet they are brave. And also lyrical and grieving."—Carol Muske-Dukes
"Here, in this astonishingly transparent collection, is a poet at his most permeable, most lucid, most luminous . . . Here is the heart and its opening and the rose and the bee and its sting."—Lucie Brock-Broido
"I don't know of any male poet who approximates the honest terror and desire, the sense of shock that runs through these poems . . . It is offensive to say that these poems are brave and yet they are brave. And also lyrical and grieving."—Carol Muske-Dukes
"Here, in this astonishingly transparent collection, is a poet at his most permeable, most lucid, most luminous . . . Here is the heart and its opening and the rose and the bee and its sting."—Lucie Brock-Broido
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I read a lot of poetry,
By A Customer
This review is from: Among Women (Paperback)
...and this book, Among Women, touched a sensitive and genuine place in my heart. Jason Shinder has written brilliantly, painfully and beautifully about things we all crave - a touch, a word, the intimate and everyday moments of a relationship, of life. Bravo to a man which such a tender and revealing way with words.Accessible, not cloaked in mystery or vague imagery, this small book is worth adding to any serious poetry collection.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
women are my weakness and so is poetry,
This review is from: Among Women (Paperback)
and jason expresses him superbly in these funny, and sweet poems about love and relationships. several of the poems are short, arranged in 3 line "stairstep " stanzas...they are romantic and understated. sublimely beautiful.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
terrific and terrifically brave,
By "spookb" (NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Among Women (Paperback)
Not your average humdrum book of poems, this one makes your heart race-- Shinder is brave, he writes about hard things well. It's a terrific book.
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