Saturday, February 25, 2006
I've been absent, I know, from here. I've been so . . . busy. With nothing. Well, almost nothing. A tired man's consolation. Lazy consolation.
I've been meaning to write up my thoughts on a bunch of chapbooks, I will soon, in serial. I'll start now with a quick mention of how truly good Tony Tost's World Jelly is; you may have heard it elsewhere, and it's true. Pick it up and read it; I don't care if you have a hard time understanding difficult poetries (let alone if you'd classify this chapbook as difficult); however you conceive of the this/that thing in our country--it doesn't matter where you stand. Pick it up and read it, and then go read almost anything else (but spare yourself the disappointment of reading your own, unless you really want to take yourself to school), it will be slack; you'll see. Talent, and dedication, integrity (poetic, that is), all show in his poetry to great effect. I still maintain something I posted around a year (?) ago regarding Invisible Bride, that TT gets away with a startling amount of --sentimentality?-- that emotion is a strong base for what he does, not intellect (though intellect of the first order, and they play off each other so well--that might be one sort of talent, one I like very much). And it proves a broad enough base to support a number of motifs -- of influence, of creation, of chaos, of desire -- in good proportion to each other (and themselves).
I know I'm making little sense here, all I mean to say is that I don't have the necessary superlatives at hand (if challenged, I may find them, or at least a more precise analysis), except to suggest you read it.
I've been meaning to write up my thoughts on a bunch of chapbooks, I will soon, in serial. I'll start now with a quick mention of how truly good Tony Tost's World Jelly is; you may have heard it elsewhere, and it's true. Pick it up and read it; I don't care if you have a hard time understanding difficult poetries (let alone if you'd classify this chapbook as difficult); however you conceive of the this/that thing in our country--it doesn't matter where you stand. Pick it up and read it, and then go read almost anything else (but spare yourself the disappointment of reading your own, unless you really want to take yourself to school), it will be slack; you'll see. Talent, and dedication, integrity (poetic, that is), all show in his poetry to great effect. I still maintain something I posted around a year (?) ago regarding Invisible Bride, that TT gets away with a startling amount of --sentimentality?-- that emotion is a strong base for what he does, not intellect (though intellect of the first order, and they play off each other so well--that might be one sort of talent, one I like very much). And it proves a broad enough base to support a number of motifs -- of influence, of creation, of chaos, of desire -- in good proportion to each other (and themselves).
I know I'm making little sense here, all I mean to say is that I don't have the necessary superlatives at hand (if challenged, I may find them, or at least a more precise analysis), except to suggest you read it.
