Customer Reviews

The Body's Precarious Balance

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When I first read this novel in 1999, I never knew what a young, up-and-coming Generation, X or Y'er could do to wield the power of poetics in his work. Sean-Thomas Dougherty, whom my mentor Lorna Dee Cervantes recommended me to, is an underlooked prize for anyone looking for something different, yet meaningful in contemporary poetry. His words are performance-based tinging upon the conscioussness of street-slang, hip-hop or rap, but maintaining that elloquence of the "classical," literary tradition of form and diction in post-modern poetry. His "personal," experiences are locked in the contradiction of one who remembers things events, people, etc. merely as a dream, yet to the reader there is no gap in finding a sentimental connections between the speaker and his environment. As I know it, this gentleman is nearing the age of thirty, launches the New-Jersey Literary Journal entitled, "The Red Book Review." His writing is colorful, yet painfully "real," fans of Selby jr, Bukowski, Kerouac, as well as Quincy Troupe or just a fellow Hip-Hop fan, should take note. Dougherty provides a wonderful landscape of a youth in his New Jersey, street setting.