Customer Reviews

Nobody Lives On Arthur Godfrey (American Poets Continuum)

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If you were to buy one book of poems to say something to you about America, about place and our nervous moving about, and yearning; about kinds of love and yearning, and the grasp for meaning in the quotidian, this would be my choice for you. In these funny, touching, gritty poems of "the commonplace", Costanzo has put his finger on the soul of a place that puzzles and fascinates. I dare you not to want to read these poems aloud to everyone you meet

These"poems"(if they can even be called such)concentrate on what has become a staple of discontented hacks everywhere;the maligning of american values and the short-changing of american popular culture..Taking aim on the simple"popular"themes of an earlier day these badly written pieces of junk belittle the everyday habits,interests,and cultural icons that were popular with an earlier generation...
That such claptrap worked in the 1960s,when it was not only chic to try and debunk one's parent's values and interests,but was in fact mandatory,said much about the essentially vapid nature of the generation known as'Baby boomers",but these redundant set-pieces take that vapidity to absurd heights..I,for one,have little problem with the popular culture and social attitudes of the '50s,and find these effete renderings not only obsolete but insulting to all those whose participation made the cultural entities herein attacked such a part of what america was.