Squandermania (Salt Modern Poets S.) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Share is one of the more gifted craftsman we have writing in America today... There is something ultimately winning about the book's lack of easy salutation, as well as a lot of sly amusement and good will to be found in the purposefully kvetchy parts. 'Squandermania' is a grownup book with grownup concerns, and it apologetically expects more of its reader than a permanently disconnected prose -- Erin Belieu The Writing Cure

Product Description

Don Share's latest collection, "Squandermania", is a book of poems that are slightly death-haunted and studded with references to marriage and fatherhood, geology and biology.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Salt Publishing (February 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184471294X
• ISBN-13: 978-1844712946
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,192,300 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praise for this book by the poet, Tom Sleigh, March 11, 2007

By	Poetry person (UK) - See all my reviews

Here is the blurb for the book, written by poet Tom Sleigh:

"Squandermania is a book of associative delight, even when the poems are at their most grave. They combine the obliquity of Mina Loy, the incantatory freshness of Roethke, and even Plath's devotion to nursery rhyme to leaven the book's prevailing tones of irony, sorrow, and regret. The poet's awareness of how daily life refuses to cohere into a consoling pattern is beautifully mirrored by his conviction that language itself signals a fall from grace and unity and emotional wholeness. And yet the poet keeps faith with language by allowing language to drive the poems, even as the poet's occasions and subject matter are grounded in what Hopkins called "the in-earnestness of speech."

--Tom Sleigh

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a Real Word!, February 3, 2008

By	Laurie Rosenblatt "Clinton" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Don't skip Don Share's "Squandermania" just because of its unusual title. It's a real word meaning something like "wanton wastage," though you won't find it in most collegiate dictionaries. Don't worry. It's not an indication that Share's poetry will be full of hard-going vocabulary-building exercises.
Actually, this smart, courageous, and passionate second poetry collection is about the ways the intentional imprecision creeping into our language (and by extension into our thought) squanders meaning. Share takes on the personal and political repercussions of elisions, evasions, and the pervasive muddlement and perversion of language that shrouds plain speech in order to obscure responsibility.
Share's poetry is not overtly political and never stoops to polemic. The success of his approach hinges on leaving the political and cultural implications as subtext. This collection is then, at the manifest level, a meditation on love, marriage, and fatherhood in these precarious times. Share looks back into his own history, "Honi soit...", out into the world "Father Cannot Yell", and at himself, "I Will Go Out For More", in poems that are both technically innovative and scathingly honest.