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kfan's review against another edition
4.0
Having come to Tricia's writing* via Twitter I was expecting this collection to be full of the same x-rated pop culture snappiness as her writing online. But despite the popeye animals on the cover, this is Formal and Dense poetry, and in this book the author proves that she is a Serious Artist. I happen to like both, although at times the poems felt so full of imagery and symbolism that I had difficulty finding a clear line through to her voice. But that's about my personal poetry preferences, not about her writing. She's a really striking and electrifying writer and I hope I get to hear her read in person some day.
Favorites were: "Good Climbing Trees Grow Us," "The Construction of a Forest for the Stage," and "The Quickening".
*coming to tricia's writing lol
Favorites were: "Good Climbing Trees Grow Us," "The Construction of a Forest for the Stage," and "The Quickening".
*coming to tricia's writing lol
andreaj's review
3.0
These poems demand to be read and reread slowly to make the running jumps of logic so thinly connected with razor wire.
jenniferaimee's review
4.0
I loved this. Powerful imagery, clever writing, creative and unique poetry - this book really had everything. My favorite was definitely "The Quickening" but wow all the poems in this were amazing.
harryr's review
4.0
The blurb says
which, you know, seems pretty fair… but if, like me, you're a bit ambivalent about whether 'surreal' and 'enigmatic' are necessarily positive qualities in poetry, I think it's worth adding that the language has a clarity, simplicity and sharpness to it which means that, whatever unexpected and inventive turns the poems take, they read beautifully.
I suppose the worry if I see something described as 'surreal' is that the writer has just chucked everything at the page to see what sticks; but that is not the case here. The poems are constantly moving in odd directions, but there is always a strong connecting thread; ideas are stretched and teased and inverted, and over and over again, the result is a clever, surprising image, a shift in tone, a new perspective.
Inevitably I clicked with some poems more than others, but the best of them, like 'The Quickening', about a whale and a boy, are magnificent.
‘Even all by themselves, the titles of Patricia Lockwood's poems reveal the sort of surreal, enigmatic, rhetorically-elongated world her sensibility inhabits effortlessly’
which, you know, seems pretty fair… but if, like me, you're a bit ambivalent about whether 'surreal' and 'enigmatic' are necessarily positive qualities in poetry, I think it's worth adding that the language has a clarity, simplicity and sharpness to it which means that, whatever unexpected and inventive turns the poems take, they read beautifully.
I suppose the worry if I see something described as 'surreal' is that the writer has just chucked everything at the page to see what sticks; but that is not the case here. The poems are constantly moving in odd directions, but there is always a strong connecting thread; ideas are stretched and teased and inverted, and over and over again, the result is a clever, surprising image, a shift in tone, a new perspective.
Inevitably I clicked with some poems more than others, but the best of them, like 'The Quickening', about a whale and a boy, are magnificent.
mattleesharp's review
4.0
God bless Patricia Lockwood for her dizzying pop culture mad lib nightmare brain. God bless Octopus Books for so consistently putting out interesting and worthwhile writing. This collection is wonderful. As one comment below put it, it teaches you how to read it. Patricia Lockwood is its own dialect sometimes and as wonderful as it is, it can also be a little exhausting. Some of these poems feel both rushed out and overwrought where they normally wouldn't because of the general language choices for the collection. But this collection viewed as a whole is still just undeniably impressive.
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