Review by Booklist Review
Trust Rich, a clarion poet of conscience, to get the fractured timbre of the times just right in a collection of vigorous lyric poems about the first four years of the twenty-first century, a period of terror, war, corporate imperialism, outrageous lies, and miasmal inarticulateness. A moment in history, Rich avers, in arresting imagery and flinty syntax, in which language has been processed into banality just like so much of the American landscape. Forthright, precise, witty, and keenly attuned to complacency, reluctance, and fear, Rich fights back with exhilaratingly choreographed poems about inane, high-pitched public cell-phone conversations, television's numbing soundtrack, the crude oversimplification and commercialization of public discourse, and the viral / spread of social impotence producing social silence. Rich also writes piercingly, and inevitably, of war, most poignantly in the powerful title poem, in which a courageous teacher in a besieged city tells his students, Don't let your faces turn to stone / Don't stop asking me why. Similarly, Rich tells readers not to give up hope and not to remain silent, because truth flows unabated behind the facade of spin and babble, and it will prevail. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Smoky and collage-like the metaphors and crystal-sharp images of Rich's earlier work (e.g., Fox) having been replaced by innuendo these mostly free-verse poems weave together conversation, phrases from newspaper articles, and quotations from other poets. The title poem exemplifies Rich's style and scope: echoing Yeats's "Among School Children," it describes war in "Beirut, Baghdad, Sarajevo, Bethlehem, Kabul. Not of course here." Quietly angry and bathed in irony, the proselike poem contains few adornments of speech and sound. It notices exteriors: the damaged buildings, the bombs, and children in a classroom, letting one play off another. Ultimately, this is poetry achieved by juxtaposition and contrast. When the resonance is there, it is not always easy to find. Suitable for academic libraries. Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
