Customer Reviews

The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets

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I often read in the bathtub, especially poetry, and with Barnstone sometimes the sudden urge to push him and his book down into the shallow water and drown it out overcome me. But then I realize that he is just a poet and is probably suffering his own distasteful form of ennui as I am. But he is a good student and probably punches a clock every morning before his organic toast and orange juice and rolls up his sleeve to do some gritty hard labor at the typewriter. After all, he's produced 501 sonnets here in what 55 minutes? Don't get me wrong, he is one of the better modern writers of the sonnet, I just don't buy his 69 year old angst. This coupled with the fact that he bungles so many good starts with half-thought pearls that go to soft matter in a spance of ten syllables and more often than not sticks in stilted endings that don't properly body the "carriage of rhythm", that I feel nauseated and throw the book down to the floor. I just think he writes for volume like Bukowski did or Berryman in his later before-suicide-tomes and that it somewhat hurts the work in that anything goes and nothing is spared. As a result there are many shining points, but mostly of zarconia rather than diamond light. That said, I just as eagerly pick it back up the next slosh and go-around in the tub hoping for some sparkling moment and sometimes find it, albeit not to the grandeur of say Berryman or droll Cummings, but I find them nonetheless.

"Why can't I sleep? My body's fine. I'm not
especially neurotic. Sad? Okay,
I'm down. Suddenly a strange river of hot
milk flowing between continents! The way
it curves on the horizon--five gold ships
and dolphins in the air--makes Yahweh warm
from a pig's navel to the stars. My lips
taste currants from a blue volcanic farm
and gossip with Seleucids bartering kings.
I get up itchy, wild, sipping hot milk.
Was I acting out a dream? Was I asleep?
Can I forget the melancholy leap
between towers, dangling from a single silk
thread? Months hum by. No sleep. The terror sings."

He's a bit of Richard Brautigan or the common-rung Beat but with a grandfatherly look and no hippy broads on the cover of his two-tone multi-syllabic billboard, but more a modern structurally and aesthetic-wise in that he never goes grossly overboard in showing that he is ultimately human and imperfect. Pick up the book. Hell it's under $3 and if you don't enjoy it with as much disdain as myself you can always join the cadre of million-dollar sellers on Amazon and become a dealer too.

Willis Barnstone is like an Allen Ginsberg or Lawrence Ferlinghetti for the 90's. The content of many of the poems contained in this book is similar to the great beat poets of the 40's and 50's. While the poetry rarely contains the anger found in Ginsberg's poems, the language occasionally lapses into crudity. Therefore, it may not appeal to all readers, but for those who want a down-to-earth picture of life presented in, of all things, sonnets, this book is definitely worth your time.