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kilgoretrout's review
5.0
I know I happen upon good poetry when I want to read it again and again and muse over the words like drinking wine slowly.
What an awesome book of poems by a poet I've only just found out about. I really love how absurd the small vignettes often are but often how quietly sad some of them are. Tate may seem otherworldly or even obfuscating in his work, but I think he's being extremely specific. I loved quite a few of them, and they left lasting impressions. One in particular "Like a Manta Ray" really spoke to me as tapping into the kind of irrational and rational ways of impulsivity. The speaker steals pearls from the bottom of a pool. As he remarks, he doesn't need them or want them, but he doesn't want the owner to have them either. There is something so brutally true about this. Sometimes we're vindictive, even to strangers for reason we create, and the poem hones in on that.
Also, "Negative Employee Situation" is really something special. An exaggerated perversion of superstition, and how it ends with them scheming to kill the new Mary is delightful.
Love this poet. Can't wait to read more.
What an awesome book of poems by a poet I've only just found out about. I really love how absurd the small vignettes often are but often how quietly sad some of them are. Tate may seem otherworldly or even obfuscating in his work, but I think he's being extremely specific. I loved quite a few of them, and they left lasting impressions. One in particular "Like a Manta Ray" really spoke to me as tapping into the kind of irrational and rational ways of impulsivity. The speaker steals pearls from the bottom of a pool. As he remarks, he doesn't need them or want them, but he doesn't want the owner to have them either. There is something so brutally true about this. Sometimes we're vindictive, even to strangers for reason we create, and the poem hones in on that.
Also, "Negative Employee Situation" is really something special. An exaggerated perversion of superstition, and how it ends with them scheming to kill the new Mary is delightful.
Love this poet. Can't wait to read more.
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