Customer Reviews

Home and Away (Poets, Penguin)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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This is not a rave or a slam. I agree with some of the comments by the other reviewers. Yes, Rachel Wetzsteon is a talented and smart writer. Yes, her poems can be clever and cold. I expect - and hope -- that she'll write better books in the future.

I enjoyed some of the poems, yawned at some. On the one hand they're intelligent, ironic, formally skillful, well-structured, smooth, controlled, never overwritten or sentimental. These qualities are valuable, especially these days, and shouldn't be taken for granted. On the other hand her poems take few risks, and can be too predictable, repetitive, controlled to the point of being bland, abstract, and unoriginal. A reviewer (in the Yale Review) once wrote that she's too derivative of Auden, and I have to agree. Her voice sounds particularly like middle and late Auden, with dashes of Larkin, Ashbery and Tate. (I like the odd combination of influences, though.) I look forward to the time when her own voice emerges, if it does. So far, I'd rank her in the middle of her generation of poets. (Obviously this will change, and obviously the whole generation hasn't emerged yet -- it could take 30 more years, if another Amy Clampitt comes along.)

By the way, I'm put off by the recent trend of using overblown jacket copy. Why is Wetzsteon likened to Dickinson or Bishop? This is false advertising, because she's not in their league. To be fair, few living poets are --- you can count them on the fingers of one hand. People should use such comparisons sparingly, and only after reading many, many contemporary poets, so that the accuracy of the comparison can be rigorously tested. Wetzsteon can be more fruitfully compared to Rachel Hadas or Andrew Motion, who share some of her virtues and vices, although I think she'll surpass them with time and hard work, and luck.

There were a few poems I liked in here, but unfortunately this book is less than the sum of its parts. The voice is smart but smug, which is still okay in small doses. By the time you finish the book, you're sick of it! It's repetitive and boring. The author may write in verse forms well, but "verse" isn't enough. There has to be wisdom (not cleverness) and humility and feeling in poetry too, which this book lacks. Overall, a disappointment. Try Rafael Campo or Brenda Shaughnessy instead.

How Rachel Wetzsteon could be considered mentionable in the same breath as Dickinson only shows how silly people are determined to be when they finally discover a talented poet (which she certainly is). Few contemporary poets have her gift of memorable meter, and of thinking a poem from beginning to end, instead of pausing to "say". This is an enjoyable book, except when she tries to make clever turns of frustration-to-laughter ala Dorothy Parker. Parker wasn't really much of a poet, but she certainly was more amusing. Wetzsteon isn't blessed that way (although Dickinson certainly was), but she has a lot to offer. I hope she gets even better.