Customer Reviews

HIV, Mon Amour: Poems

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This is a tremendous book of poetry that's already won one major prize and I read in the New York Times last week that it is nominated for the upcoming National Critics Circle Award. I have to admit I was completely stunned by it and think very, very highly of this book. More than any other poet that comes out of the "New York School" started by Frank O'Hara and continued by all sorts of interesting writers like John Ashbery, Ann Lauterbach and so forth, this is far and away the most powerful writer of the bunch. In large part this is because of her subject matter: focused on life and death issues rather than somewhat cosmetic aesthetic concerns, and with a much greater emotional range that what I've seen come out of experimental American poets before. Wow! The book is like wandering around in a huge, incredibly graphic and detailed dream, and its imagery is absolutely wonderful. I would recommend it highly to anyone interested at all in contemporary poetry. All best to Tory Dent, wherever you are!

Tory Dent is one of the great poets of America. She has continued a new and dazzling poetry of dissent, which combines critical and lyrical and political elements. Like a true "performance artist," like Ann Hamilton, her poetry activates a complex narrative with historical reverberations. Her long poem on her "Quarantine" shows the heartbreaking honesty and anger of this wonderful poet. Each of her poems is as electrifying as a sculpture of abjection by Kiki Smith, whose wild talent most resembles Dent's We see in these poems the body of woman presented in all abjection and also as a triumph above fragility. In my lifetime, I have never seen such a startling poetry of ultimacy and its contents. It is a poetry to be placewd next to the architecrtural masques of the late John Hejduk, who had a like intensity and utter seriousness. The poetry of our time is too often whimsical, false and cheap, and made for consumption. Dent's poetry, like the best of Anna Swir the Polish baroque poet, is a revelation for her generation. It does not use confession unwisely; it does not refuse to name the poignant wounds, betrayals and loyalties. This is a poet who demands our truest attention and deserves it. I recommend her work without reservations.