Customer Reviews

Viper Rum

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

 

 

Mary Karr's work is a pleasant change from most of the newer poetry. It is a refreshingly emotional look at death and suicide. These themes weigh heavily in the first portion of the book yet are not overpowering, and actually serve to demonstrate well the mindset of a person with suicidal thoughts. In addition, she includes an intriguing insight into religious beliefs, subtly pointing out some of the hypocrycies therein. The second half of the work, a treatise on her neliefs of the role of poetry is also very valuable. She explains the need for emotional content in poetry and the necessity of clear presentation of these ideas. As a college student, I give the work high praise in that I will not sell the book at the end of the semester. Overall, it is well worth a glance.

I loved Mary Karr's memoirs, and I wanted to read more of her, but there always seems to be some mental block when I try to read poetry. Not here. I read the entire book, "Against Decoration" included, in two hours, and then read it again, and again. It's always a good sign when you read anything and your breath changes. Every one of these poems "stopped" me somehow, and the essay at the end made me grin and also fed the academic nerd in me. Karr mixes dirty and sweet in these beautiful, strong poems. You won't forget them.

I enjoyed "The Devil's Tour" (Karr's other in-print book of poetry) so much, and bought "Viper Rum" as soon as I found it. I was not disappointed. Reflecting on loss in various forms, Karr says what she means, and says it beautifully.

No 'decoration' here - the poems prove that the poet's ideas presented in the essay "Against Decoration" (at the back of this book) work very well.

The idea of poetry is a wonderful thing. At some point in childhood I was taught that poetry consists of beautiful words which cut to the core of the matter and which strongly, easily move the reader's emotions in few words. This idea really stuck with me, but I have never found a poet who so completely fulfilled it (few even came close, really) until I read Mary Karr.

Hooray to Mary Karr! the first reason I bought the bookwas the wisdom of the line" we worship what we want", which is the foundation for the misdirection of American Spirituality.Then the second part of the book deals the pretenenous of the academic poetry movement in the hoity-toiety magazines and college sponsered quarterlies.References to Isoled and who the hell is tristan make me sick. A califoria poet nameed bukowski described the form best when he said" " you hold it up to the light and nothing comes through" Hooray for Mary Karr.There might be hope for some feeling in poetry yet.

In "Against Decoration," the Afterword to "Viper Rum," Mary Karr defines the two sins of contemporary poetry: 1)absence of emotion and 2)lack of clarity. One can accuse Karr of neither. Like her prose, Karr's poems are direct and self-depracating, yet brimming with an emotion rendered with crystalline prose and multi-faceted images. Karr is an immensely talented and very important literary voice. I encourage anyone interested in poetry to pick up "Viper Rum".

Viper Rum is annoying. I've read the book twice now and it's more so the second time. Most of her poems are what I call "merchandising misery." Parents die, lovers leave, controlled or illicit substances do damage, and religion offers more horror than solace. Her language is clear but mostly flat, often "decorated" weirdly. For example, "In a few mornings no man will shave in my mirror/so I lie in misery's bed" precedes a graphic description of their last coupling "with moonlight on my back"; almost every poem has something comparable. Occasionally a striking image appears; she doesn't miss all the time. (Hence the second star in my rating.)

But the truly annoying section of this book is her essay "Against Decoration," where she expresses her disapproval of rich and skillfully deployed language, as practiced by Amy Clampitt, James Merrill, and others admired by the likes of Helen Vendler. Now, Clampitt's "What the Light Was Like" is one of my all time favorite poems, and Merrill dazzles me with his mastery of language. I learn from Helen Vendler, a lot. But Mary Karr thinks Clampitt's and Merrill's poetry are wildly over-decorated, and can't imagine why Vendler enjoys being mystified by poems. Karr's essay contains more than a whiff of, well, anti-intellectualism in the bad sense. She thinks "poetry's primary purpose is to stir emotion." If annoyance is an emotion, then she has succeeded.