Customer Reviews

Polyverse (New American Poetry)

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Saw Lee Ann Brown read at the University of Maine in February 2001; was utterly captivated. Purchased "Polyverse" and commenced much reading and re-reading. Joyfully chaotic, this is juicy, sexy, fresh poetry that delights in the jamming together of sounds and words and images in an unnatural but deliciously entertaining way. It doesn't have to make any sense. It doesn't always. Though sometimes it does.

This book aims to astonish with its reach but instead is a mish-mash of material that is ultimately mediocre. The author's dabblings in various modes of writing falter so often that the book becomes an ongoing example of the potential pitfalls to be avoided when 'appropriating' a style (the possible self indulgence of New York School writing, the occasionally forced obscurity of langpo, etc.). These poems are not horrible and would make a decent portfolio for a creative writing undergrad or maybe even a grad student who was performing at the bottom of the class, but one can only wonder how this manuscript got published by a major poetry press.