Customer Reviews

Spar (Iowa Poetry Prize)

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Perhaps early success is an utter curse; I begin to wish no one were allowed to publish a 1st book till they turned 35 (note: burn your MFA theses!) Early success seems to engender a pavlovian response: what we're praised for, we do again & again. And so, here, we have Volkman repeating herself for 50-odd pages, saying nothing with stylistic cleverness equivalent to a parlor game, relying on style as a crutch to mask a startling substance deficit. One, two, three poems glimpsed here & there in our best journals were riveting; seeing 20-some all together will engender much wincing in those of us who had our hopes up. Still, I hold out hope for book three--may it be a careful slow while in coming--

It is obvious as you enter this book of poems why it was a prize winner. The poet is very talented. She has taken the tradition of the prose poem and jumped into it wholeheartedly. There are a few non-prose poems thrown in with titles which helps to break up the density of the prose poems.

All that being said, this is not a book of poems for the lay reader. I came away feeling that this is artistically sound for those intrested in: post-modernism, surrealism and prose-poetry, but for the general public this may be a difficult book to delve into.

I will be interested to see where this poet takes her style into the future because with lines (from page 7 in my edition) such as the following how can there not be promise!: Meet me two years earlier in the street. Omega Street. I'll try to be there, to be / perfectly present, to get the eyes right.

Karen Volkman is a very special poet, & for me this book is an absolute masterpiece in terms of aural sophistication & conceptual ingenuity. Volkman writes like no one else, & her writing is rife with great poetic decisions. Her art inspires me with its great vision & boldness. I don't know how unique to me this strong feeling of being able to relate to the thoughts she presents is, but I love it. The book starts with the poem Create Desire, which starts with the line "Someone was searching for a form of fire." Is that what life is? That you are someone searching for a form of fire? Later, she ends one of the prose poems with "Your turn." She ends one with a string of 3 vowels. She builds one by planting in your mind the suspician that she's addressing a lover, then reveals in the last few words that she is indeed. Her tropes & unexpected word choices are so exciting. One of my favorite syntgactical excerpts from the book is in one of the prose poems when she writes,"Plural keeps and cues med, does me dither. Is what is more than mind is -- when I am?" -- though that's not much of an example of her troping. Nothing she does in this book feels accidental or not fully thought through; everything feels like a perfect deliberate decision. She is aware of what prose poems do to the weight of words & the pace of the poem. She's very sparing with titles. She uses more regular lines & stanzas when she decides to. Reading this book is like riding a motorcycle with no brakes! As far as another reviewer's comment that Volkman doesn't give the reader enough information, I think the level of electric metaphor that might be abstruse is a matter of taste.... If you're interested enough in poetry to be considering this book & reading my review, do buy the book; I hope you'll be as pleased as I am.

I was disappointed, at first, by the prose poem approach: what would happen to the humorous voices rounded by line breaks, alligator purses, tennis courts and humanity's other detritus? This is a poet capable of anything, including sheer beauteous irrelevancy. I wanted her to cling to the personable. But she does sustain a voice, a narrrative harkening back to embodiment, while playing with it. Very impressive. A bit cold? Performance like this can only be judged by the next permutation. I eagerly await it. I do.

Karen Volkman is definitely one of the leading poets of her generation. Of this, I have no doubt. In this, her second collection, Volkman uses a denser language and syntax than in her first collection, but the effect is quite stunning. I am not a huge fan of the prose poem, but Volkman knows how to use that form well and demonstrates it in this collection over and over. This is a beautifully-written collection of poetry and is highly recommended by me to anyone interested in what the poets under 40 are writing.//C. Dale Young, Poetry Editor, NEW ENGLAND REVIEW

Karen Volkman is one of the most talented poets in America today. Her poems are rife with startle and surprise, but the unexpected images and phrases are always apt, never attempts at novelty for novelty's sake. Spar is primarily comprised of a series of untitled prose poems that are unrelenting in their intensity. There's an almost devotional quality to the poems, so many of which are addressed to or speak of a kind of lover/deity--they call up English Metaphysical god seekers like George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne, as well as Emily Dickinson's restless hunger for transcendence. The poems are almost ecstatic, immersing themselves in an ocean of words and emotion and intellect (and for Volkman feelings and thoughts are one). Much contemporary American poetry seems embarrassed by passion; Spar's fearless lyricism is a welcome rebuke to knee-jerk irony and earnest mundanity. It's a challenging and invigorating book.

Google Karen Volkman online and there is this hilarious review written about her, which says what I think far better than I ever could. Volkman is a joke. That people like this teach?!?!