I bought this book earlier this year when I went to a book signing at ABC Books and made my way to the poetry section in addition to the martial arts and football books. I picked it up to browse during football games, but I ended up just reading it as I do so many books that I plan to browse.
So this book is a collection of poems by a woman of some success–her work has appeared in literary journals I’ve heard of. The poems are modern and a bit self-indulgent, which led me to wonder about modern poetry: Is it more about the poet telling his or her story and making you sympathize or empathize with him or her more than it is about using an incident to create a resonant moment within the reader? Because a lot of poems seem more about the poet’s expressing himself or herself more than anything else.
As in this book.
The poet recounts the end of a relationship with a modern sensibility, and her life experience does not resonate with mine, and her poems don’t evoke anything in me as a reader. As a matter of fact, certain elements create a conscious distance, and they express something, but it’s not necessarily good poetry.
Of course, she’s an award-winning poet with poems in journals whose names I recognize, whilst I am an almost double-digit selling poet whose works have pseudonymously appeared in zines like Monkey Spank. So perhaps being a successful poet is more about one point of view over the other, which is mine.
