Customer Reviews

Order of the Ordinary (Salt Modern Poets S.)

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There are all kinds of reasons to think Joe Doerr won't ever be a popular poet: he likes to write in long sequences; he's interested in obscure areas of Anglo-Saxon history; he quotes large chunks of old Welsh language poetry; he plays complicated games with acrostics and the like. Then again, if you don't mind being a bit bewildered for a while, you might come to find all of these qualities exciting. I know I did. In a poetry scene dominated by easy personal confession, Joe Doerr is fresh air.

He also finds all sorts of interesting ways of linking past and present. "War Music for Steel Guitar" just kills me, in how it takes a medieval Welsh poem about a dead young man and slowly morphs it into a country song from a Texas bar. You get a real sense of how much history changes, but also how enduring certain emotions like grief can be.

It took me a while to really digest this book, but I think I'll remember it for a long time too.