Customer Reviews

Face

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

 

 

There has always been something disarmingly grounded about Sherman Alexie's utterly enjoyable poetry. From the first poem til the last in any of his collections, Alexie invites the reader to walk beside him as an equal. Whether he is exploring his own past, his country's political present or his fevered visions of the future, Alexie flips over the subject as many times as it takes to showcase all the sides and isn't afraid to use every tool he's got.

"Face," Alexie's latest collection of poetry, absolutely continues this tradition, with challenging, emotionally honest work that is daring, and funny, and human. As a writer, I am constantly impressed by how subtly the poems can change -- starting out firmly anchored in one perspective, and just as the reader begins to understand where things are going, Alexie flips on light within the poem to show you what even he didn't know was hidden.

And although Alexie has published over a dozen poetry books previously (as well as a half dozen books of fiction and several screenplays), he still approaches the page with a fantastic sense of play and wonder. I always enjoy how in his books fresh takes at form poetry rub shoulders with narrative prose poems which sink into the couch with clever and devasting free verse. In this book, Alexie experiments with the use of footnotes -- allowing the reader to explore the same text several times with increasingly levels of information, which has an effect that is sometimes funny and sometimes jarring. He charms and riffs, but he doesn't ever take his eyes off your heart.

This book just serves as further evidence of why Alexie is such an important and unrelentingly influential voice in contemporary American writing. Let's just hope he doesn't wait so long before putting out his next poetry collection!

This is a very powerful book about fathers and sons, the father that Sherman Alexie has lost and the sons he is fathering. The first poem describes the interplay between a father protecting his fragile newborn son from losing sleep from the noise of a bird's nest in the eaves and the guilt and sympathetic pain he feels with the "scree-scree-scree" the starling parent makes on discovering the nest and the baby birds are gone.

"We will never know how this winged mother
And father would have buried their children.
Our son almost died at birth. His mother
And I would have buried him in silence."

I was hooked on the book from that first poem.

The other thing that I loved about this book was the poems with footnotes. Somehow that intrigued me. The brevity and intensity of a poem, but things needed further explanation. Fun.

Beautifully honest prose and poetry. Humor and reality all mixed into one. Reading the majority of Alexie's work, this is, in my opinion, the best poetry/prose he has ever written.

Sherman shares both his tears and laughter in another volume of intensely relevant poetry. You can't help but gain insight into his psche and hopefully yours. He's always at his best no matter what form of creativity he employees.

I have read this out loud to my great nephew (12) and he loves the book. He takes it with him for reading, and then we talk and laugh about the lines. Sherman Alexi is always a treat. I wait for each new set of writings by Sherman Alexi.

Although Alexie's voice is largely the same throughout the poems, it works better in the graphic novel/fiction version of his coming of age self. It's not that Face is bad per se, but it's not great. However, even Alexie himself acknowledges that his poetic ability may not be of the top caliber, but he wants to express himself and makes no apologies.

That said, it's not entirely a book that I would recommend kids younger than 15 read. Many of the poems deal with Alexie as an adult, and again, he makes no apologies for the content. I will say, though, that all of the poems dealing with him as a child, or his adult self dealing with elements from his childhood are excellent poems and would be more interested for a younger audience.

-Lindsey Miller, lindseyslibrary