Customer Reviews

Goest

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This a remarkable collection by Swensen, but I had to read it three times through and even memorize one of the poems ("The Development of Natural Gas") before the internal sound logic of these poems was revealed to me. Thus I was able to move from a stance that was somewhat dismissive of what I saw as purposively obfuscatory work to a deeper appreciation of the aural quality of Swensen's rhythms. The final poem, "Five Landscapes," is a strong and appropriate coda.

This is Swensen's best book, in my opinion. It's composed of lyrical, haunting poems that meditate on various permutations of light and color. Maybe that makes it sound academic, but it's not. These are often deeply moving, sometimes unsettling, poems.