Review by Booklist Review
Many of the devastating, deft poems in Lasky's new collection begin with an unassuming quip or comment, such as a cashier in a local market holding forth about the Colosseum, or a speaker proclaiming, I daresay it is sonnet weather / And may be 12-16 lines long of sun. The humor is a deceptive hook, however, because the musings quickly turn inward and are often self-eviscerating. Throughout this shattering volume, Lasky manages the rare poetic feat of exploring nihilism without self-pity. Echoes of Sylvia Plath are balanced by others of Adrienne Rich and Heather McHugh. Walt Whitman lurks in here somewhere, too. Heartbreak has a long history, Lasky acknowledges, but its fallout is still rawly personal and sometimes even embarrassing. The title poem yanks the reader from a modern romance that includes a date at the Guggenheim to the brutal arenas of 50 BCE Rome. Other poems discuss a different kind of death, even calling into question the literal page and genre. It's true what they say, says the speaker in You Were So Blond, Poetry is a destructive force. --Alessio, Carolyn Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lasky (Thunderbird) opens her fourth collection with the phrase "Consume my heart" and proceeds to consume herself over the course of the book's 59 poems. From the beginning, the poems are concerned with death and self, But otherwise it's hard to see past the vague obsessions clouding the work. There is maybe a broken relationship, maybe a death, maybe depression. Each poem is concerned with pointing out that it is a poem, that the reader is holding a book of poems. The trope is occasionally interesting; "Horace, to the Romans," reaches passed the word to call out the reader for disliking poems about poetry. Unfortunately, that moment of meta-humor fades quickly and the book gets bogged down in repetition and reveling in its own melancholy. Lasky claims that people don't read poems because "speaking to the dead is not something you want to do," before turning around and saying that poems exist "Because of sound." Neither claim is really backed up in the work. Still, there are some great sensory images, as when Lasky reflects upon "the yellow light of the sun eating my face." You believe her and want to feel the same. Sadly, the book is unfocused and meanders for too long, the feelings she intends to evoke cannot get past the words on the page. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
