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msand3's review
3.0
At his best, Andrade’s poetry generates startling images through juxtapositions of common poetic elements (body, color, landscape, etc.) reminiscent of 19th century Symbolists. At his worst, his poetry consists of strings of lovely-sounding words that are too abstract and obtuse to make much sense despite the gracefulness of the language on the page, resulting in a type of empty beauty. Many of these poems (too many, unfortunately) are the verse equivalent of an air-brushed photograph: artificially manipulated for a stylized look that leaves me feeling hollow rather than enraptured by the end result. That being said, when Andrade hits the mark, his poems can have a stirring emotional resonance. The problem is that reading his poetry causes me to vacillate between these two up-and-down extremes.
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