Philip Schultz, Failure (Harcourt, 2007)
I got about a third of the way through Failure then misplaced the book. Once I found it and started again, I found I liked it better, thus adding more evidence to my hypothesis that the current emotions of the reader affect what s/he feels about any given book. Which sounds like an optimistic beginning to this review, but I didn't like it that much better.
Narrative poetry is a tricky thing, especially given that poetry is where that old chestnut "show, don't tell" does the majority of its heavy lifting. Sometimes the line gets blurry enough that you can read a passage either way. The poets who tread this particular line tend to be more inconsistent than most, for obvious reasons; I can't think of anyone who always manages to stay on the "show" side. Then again, such things may be judgment calls. I'll leave it to you:
"Patricia says, the Righteous Brothers and I
moved in Thanksgiving, 1977,
and immediately began looking for
that ever-loving feeling, rejoicing
at being a citizen of the ever-clanging future,
all of us walking up Perry Street,
down West Tenth, around Bleecker,
along the Hudson, with dogs, girlfriends..."
("The Adventures of 78 Charles Street")
It looks like a pretty clear-cut example of "tell" to me. But, as usual, one can find a just-about-equal number of examples of "show", most of which are in the back half of the book (which can also be used as evidence that the emotions of the reader have nothing to do with his or her feelings about the book), which is comprised of the long poem "The Wandering Wingless". It's worth reading, but it probably won't be the best book you pick up this year. ***