Customer Reviews

Why Speak?: Poems

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Nathaniel Bellows, Why Speak? (Norton, 2007)

It's obvious from the moment you open Why Speak? and start reading its first piece that Nathaniel Bellows is very, very good at what he does.

"From the highway I see the open, unknown field, two silos the same
battered blue, the sign with its white letters still singing the name

ALFALFA FARM. And next door, the house of an old friend, long gone,
now redone and different from how I knew it: raw, dug-up lawn,

cracked storm door, a van in the driveway balanced on blocks where
his sisters would play under a pile of ratty afghans...."
("Alfalfa Farm")

Everything that makes Nathaniel Bellows worth reading, and for that matter a lot of things that make most poetry worth reading, can be found in that passage. It's elevated language, the definition give to poetry by some luminary or other back in the day, but it's still recognizably English, with rhythm and ramble, that kind of storytelling quality that works really well in a good poem. It's got some fun wordplay ("the sign...still singing..."), keen observation, a sense of passing time. It's a poem that makes you want to keep going, and it opens a book that is remarkably consistent in providing poems that do the same.

This is not one to tear through; I kept going back to it, a poem or two at a time, over the course of a few weeks, letting it simmer piece by piece. An excellent book all the way around, and highly recommended. ****