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bethnellvaccaro's review against another edition
5.0
I read very little poetry, so it took me a long time to actually pick up this book. I was born in Mammoth Cave, KY and lived in the park for the first six months of life. My father worked in the park and my uncle was superintendent, so the subject matter is dear to me. Reading these poems makes me yearn to return and visit the park, which I haven't seen since the early eighties.
fairislemeadow's review against another edition
4.0
Written by my college Poetry teacher, I just now got around to reading it.
suddenflamingword's review against another edition
3.0
While a strongly shaped collection, I'm left indifferent by the central metaphor of the cave. As "most beautiful when it come close/to absence" as McCombs gets with his poesy, it doesn't seem to exceed or diverge from the cavernous imaginary that has driven literature for as long as literature has been aware of caves. Perhaps its most durable poems bind this spelunker metaphysics to power: the archaeologists that "bend like surgeons" yet seem to never wonder "what artifact will tell the future/of a longing wild and inarticulate" line up with Stephen Bishop's largely inarticulate longing under the boot of the entrepreneurial slaver Doctor Croghan who owned Mammoth Cave.
There's an underlying (no pun intended) obsession with control that feels undernourished in exchange for, as Merwin notes in his foreword, "what informs the references, all of them, is the underworld." The idea of the "subaltern cannot speak" comes to mind- Bishop's experiences as "my pale inventions" and McCombs poetry like being "vigilant for his shadow in my own/his voice as it differed from the wind." In that sense it's very much a child of its time, though I wonder if by bending over it like a surgeon I'm artifacting it. Regardless, It's a smart collection made sturdy by the historical reliability of its central metaphor.
There's an underlying (no pun intended) obsession with control that feels undernourished in exchange for, as Merwin notes in his foreword, "what informs the references, all of them, is the underworld." The idea of the "subaltern cannot speak" comes to mind- Bishop's experiences as "my pale inventions" and McCombs poetry like being "vigilant for his shadow in my own/his voice as it differed from the wind." In that sense it's very much a child of its time, though I wonder if by bending over it like a surgeon I'm artifacting it. Regardless, It's a smart collection made sturdy by the historical reliability of its central metaphor.
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