Customer Reviews

The Dig and Hotel Fiesta (Illinois Poetry Series)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Emanuel is a terrifically strong writer, one America's best young mainstream poets, and this two-in-one volume holds up to -- and deserves -- close and repeated readings. The people who have given this book sophmoric, thoughtless one-star reviews are probably as pretentious and lacking in subtley as their comments.

Lynn Emanuel's work in this combined collection is fresh and daring. It isn't surprising that some readers find it off-putting to encounter an entirely confident voice that doesn't beg a reader's approval but marches on with the keen intellect, humor, sharp and engaging characters and stories. Additionally Emanuel's imagery challenges and re-dresses the old cherry blossoms of verse.

Lynn Emanuel's work in this combined collection is fresh and daring. It isn't surprising that some readers find it off-putting to encounter an entirely confident voice that doesn't beg a reader's approval but marches on with the keen intellect, humor, sharp and engaging characters and stories and imagery that challenges the old cherry blossoms of verse.

Such a different book but never the less it is very good and very fun to read and act out!

It's always interesting when people either love or hate something, where there's no middle ground. And in art, often people hate things because it doesn't fit their idea of what art is, which is based on that which they've seen before. I can't bear much poetry and love Lynn Emanuel's work for precisely that reason: it's not like anything else. Her voice, her format is her own--sharp, clear, and funny--you laugh because she has hit the mark so perfectly.

Lynn Emmanuel provides poetry not of self indulgence but simply of self in these two collections of poems. Her voice is strong, confident yet avoids the pitfalls of seeing meaning where there is none. That combined with the exacting but rich vocabulary make this collection one of my favorites to read, reread, and recommend to others.

The poems in this collection could have been written on a type writer BY a type writer as Randall Jarrell would have put it. Let us not fool ourselves by bad poetry anymore. Save us from this mediocrity!!!

With this book of poetry Ms. Emanuel conclusively proves that she is indeed the finest example of America's minor Poets.