From Publishers Weekly
The poems in this debut collection evoke the artistry of Edward Hopper as fiction writer Baxter ( Through the Safety Net) plays with images of light, hopelessness and the loss of American innocence and creativity. The poet fashions a vista of shopping malls, factories and highways in order to rail--often heavy-handedly--against complacency and naivete: "Say that it's hollow and they'll just laugh / . . . which is why if you tilt American heads backwards / American eyes, like dolls' eyes, snap shut suddenly." The way out of this "sleep," Baxter convincingly argues, is via the imagination--the "current" that will "pass through deadened arms, / until all the stories will be original again." In poems that celebrate art, music and literature, "life is proved / to be, not a still life, but otherwise." Despite some awkward imagery ("his favorite word flung in your face / like a blood clot"), and a sometimes blatant didacticism meant to implicate the reader, this volume is redeemed by its inventiveness and originality of form, content and spirit.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
