Customer Reviews

The Thousand Wells: Poems (New Criterion Series)

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

 

 

I had to come to Kirsch's defense after reading the first review here. One star? Comments only fit for Jonathan Safran Foer's adventures in nepotism? Nyet. There is a grace to these poems which more than balances their admittedly modest philosophical ambition. To merely watch the forms unfold with their intended ease is truly delightful--a word I've almost forgotten the meaning of since being stuck with the idiot abortion "verse" of most poets from the past, oh, 50 years. Not that Kirsch is any messianic figure, nor that these poems will cause (m)any enthusiastic unruined 16 yr olds to bring much-needed counterrevolution to any Ivy League humanities departments, but they are elegant, aware of cool and counterculture, the entire urban scene and its discontents. What sets these apart is an elegance, an grave anti-gravity, in the sense admired by Nietzsche. They represent evidence of the way out of the present literary darkness we're all maundering in. Congratulations, Mr. Kirsch.

I picked this book up in a bookstore (of course I later ordered it from Amazon.com), and was overwhelmed by the virtuosity, maserty of form and technique, and emotional sophistication demonstrated by this young poet. The language is so dazzling, the moods so evocative, the point of view so unpredictable (yet always firmly established), I was just carried away. I can't recommend him enough. Can this really be his first book? I'm amazed, charmed, hooked. I notice the book has already won the New Criterion poetry prize. More, undoubtedly, to follow. I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone searching, yearning for a powerful new voice in American poetry. I think I found him.

It is impossible to stress enough the awfulness of this book. Kirsch's book reports disguised as reviews are bad enough, but these totally unidiomatic, humorless, intellectually miniscule poems are worse. He's an absurdity: he writes like a Prime Minister or owner of a fleet of Whalers. Somone stop him!