3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good book., July 18, 2008
This review is from: Les Barricades Mysterieuses: thirty-two villanelles (Paperback)
Jared Carter, Les Barricades Mysterieuses (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1999)
Earlier this month, I read Jared Carter's second book, Pincushion's Strawberry, and I have to say that overall I wasn't entirely impressed with it. Well, fifteen years went by between Carter's second and his third, Les Barricades Mysterieuses, and it seems that Carter spent those intervening years learning to write a really, really good formal poem.
Villanelles are one of those odd strict forms where the highest praise one can give a poet is that the reader forgets he's reading a strict form. It's even tougher when the poet adheres to the traditional rules of the form (especially with villanelles, poets like to bend the rules a good deal now and again). But, as the jacket blurbs mention, Carter does manage it, and quite nicely. The selected-at-random quote I use in most poetry reviews doesn't even begin to hint at the subtlety, actually; I liked this poem for its subject far more than its use of the language:
"Come together at last, no longer strangers,
Braceleted with numbers, stripped of names,
asleep and drifting in these still waters,
they share a timeless urge--to be forever
lost in each other's arms, having no shame,
come together at last. No longer strangers,
they touch in casual ways we half-remember--
moored in the twilight, tethered by a chain,
asleep and drifting..."
("Tankroom")
Jared Carter has made it, folks. If you're a poetry fan, and especially if you're a fan of formal poetry, I highly recommend checking out Les Barricades Mysterieuses; good stuff indeed. *** ½
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Les Barricades Mysterieuses, April 6, 2001
This review is from: Les Barricades Mysterieuses: thirty-two villanelles (Paperback)
Carter's recent collection is a sensuous flow of imagery, extracted from his Midwestern roots and refined through an obscure Italian verse form. The book extends its first invitation, the magnetic "Improvisation", and once the embrace is welcomed carries the reader into transitional realities of shifting perception. From the curious and sinister "Tankroom" to the palpable eroticism of "Candle", Carter's voice is at once dark and unyielding; a plaintive calling from a shadowed nightscape, reaffirming our own long night of the soul.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An old form made new..., January 17, 2005
This review is from: Les Barricades Mysterieuses: thirty-two villanelles (Paperback)
First a moment of full disclosure - "Clavichord" - one of the poems in this collection originally appeared in _Curriculum Vitae_ the small literary magazine that I edit. That said, I obviously enjoy Carter's work. When I teach creative writing, my students are always reluctant to embrace forms - they feel that their ideas are somehow constricted by the demands that formal work places upon them - yet _Les Barricades Mysterieuses_ is the most elegant and eloquent rejoinder to that argument I have seen in quite some time. In Carter's work, tension ripples under the surface - like the hidden streams that are the subject of "Interlude". It's impossible to read these villanelles and not be impressed by the craftsmanship and emotional nakedness that provides the underpinnings for all 32 of these poems.
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