Customer Reviews

Wild Civility (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

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I read this poet's first book, "Shattering Air" (BOA), and little there prepared me for this one. It's an enormous departure, and my first reaction was "Wow! Incredible! Finally, something that breaks the style of decades of garden-variety, flat, tepid, music-less, formless free verse American poetry!" The writing in Biespiel's new book is so vibrant. It's unlike anything out there. Entirely unique and dramatic (though a dictionary is required!). "Wild Civility" rocks with rowdy, tempestous, lyric poems about the poet's hard drinking, hard partying days, his ambivalence toward faith and prayer, and his yearning for home--all in a blazing new form, his invented 9-line "American sonnet." Bold, to say the least (and his Preface at the beginning is even bolder--a must read to understand the dramatic voices he incorporates into his own). The language can be overwhelming, I have to admit, but the poems do what (I think) poems should do--tell the truth and reach deep inside of me.

This book is cutting edge stuff. The monologues are like arias: they are a portrait of a probing mind. Biespiel, unlike a whole lot of his contemporaries, trusts the medium itself. I have to say that after my first read through I found the work teetered on a mannerism, but then I just had to read it a second and third time (dictionary is a must here...some of the language is really lavish!) because the poems seemed so entirely unique. It was then that I understood how that these poems are terrifically new (yes, Mr. Pound, someone can still "make it new"). His calling these poems "American sonnets" is a real dare. American poetry needs to be whipped up and feverish. Biespiel is at the forefront. I wish other poets challenged us dedicated poetry readers the same way.

I found the majority of these poems obscure and unintelligable. There is also a lack of objects in his poems, their too "inward" or something. He has some talent, but these poems don't show it.