Customer Reviews

Provoked in Venice: The Rider Quintet, vol. 3 (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm going to have to contest that as large as this book is, it seems a little moronic to try and sum it up in a one-sentence review, somewhat wittily titled. That is why I didn't find what was on this page, review-wise, "helpful." Mark Rudman's book is exploratory, an array of forms, and of the voices heard in them. You get the feeling you've never heard ideas before in a poem, then you realize you've never heard ideas expressed like this in a poem. As much as is implicit in Hart Crane is found here in dialogue, as much as Robert Lowell chisels, Mark Rudman pieces together. "Venice is a mystery beyond any solution," is only one of the epigrams you can pull out of "Provoked..." if you just pass through it, and admire for being succinct, yet broad enough to suggest the intuitive grasp behind the rest of the book's inquisitions. Altogether I wouldn't give "Provoked" five stars because it suggests, as great works should, some feeling...that there's more.

One should do himself/herself a favor and read PROVOKED IN VENICE, the third installment of Mark Rudman's exceptional and audacious trilogy. One finds deft lyrical poems distinguished not only as fine parts collected in the whole of a book, but also for their thematic progression that affords an extremely rewarding read. This is a book rich in allusion and cultural reference, but is ultimately marked by the elementary capacity to learn through experience. An extremely capable book that deserves reading after reading...a shame it didn't win the Pulitzer last year.

I only bought this book because it was required for a course I was enrolled in and which Rudman taught. Like Provoked In Venice, the course and instructor were insufferable. Save your money for something worth your time and attention.

Mark Rudman's poetry is very distant. Whenever I read his poems I feel like he's keeping something very important from me, like the point.