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Are You Experienced? Baby Boom Poets At Midlife

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Do Baby Boomers grow up, grow old--finally come of age? The answer of course is absolutely. Editor Gemin says that many contributors in this volume were reluctant to be classified as middle aged, yet that "certain age" has become its own symbol of a time filled with so much promise and possibility. Tony Hoagland, in his poem "Are You Experienced" says, after watching a Jimi Hendrix concert that:

... as I studied
the fresco of vomit on concrete,
that one day this moment

cleaned up and polished
would itself become
a kind of credential. 191

These are poems of leaving and coming home, poems of addiction and excess, poems of redemption, of coming to terms, of politics, poems of being lost and being found again and again. These are poems of aging.

Arranged thematically, Gemin has chosen poems rendered in experience. These experiences are transmitted through sharp, sometimes excruciating detail. While most poems in this volume are narrative, nearly all speak to the passing of time--a passage that is all at once sad and joyous--and often bewildering.

While writing these pieces may have been redemptive for many poets, reading these poems can be, in many ways, restorative, proof that all we stood for, all we believed in, has not been lost. In her poem, "Antilamentation," Dorianne Laux's asks that we regret nothing of those days, not the mistakes nor even the triumphs. "You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake . . . Relax . . . Don't bother remembering / any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign / on the corner, and watch all the people walk by (200).

Highly recommended for Boomers and wannabes alike.