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dashes101's review
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
disliked this so much. so slow, no plot (which i typically like), main character is the adult version of holden caulfield, no character growth at all. imagine reading 200 pages of sad baby man complaining about how icky his life is and then doing absolutely nothing to change anything. good god.
teatales's review
2.0
Truly who was I at 15 that this was one of my favourite books? I never want to read any book by a male writer about being a male writer again
fham's review
funny
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
cmanick's review
3.0
"Here's the thing. I'm basically willing to do anything to come up with a really good poem. That's my goal in life. And it hasn't happened. When I look at the lives of poets, I understand what's wrong with me. They were so tortured, so messed up. I'm only a little messed up, I'm tortured to the point where I couldn't sleep very well sometimes, and I don't answer mail as I should. I've also run up a significant credit-card debt." (lol) very interesting stuff ;-)
jorayne35's review
3.0
Read it in a day, liked and enjoyed it, but most likely ultimately forgottable.
prairiedances's review
1.0
Could barely get through this book. It's not a bad book per se, just completely not my style of narrator, plot, topic, etc. at all.
mizannie's review
5.0
He had me at: "Obviously I'm up in the barn again -- which sounds like a country song, except for the word 'obviously.'"
I'm guessing the appeal of this book will be mainly to writers, poets and students of poetry and writing. I laughed (chortled?) out loud at many things in this book at the same time feeling incredibly frustrated with the main character whose "writer's block" at times seemed more like a case of perverse avoidance. But what is writer's block but a a writer's painful awareness of the fleeting and microscopic significance of any particular piece of writing when considered in the centuries-long tradition of the written language? "What could I possibly write that would be worth the effort? or rather, worth more than the pleasure I'd get from organizing my office, giving the dog a bath, or helping my neighbor install a hardwood floor?" I hate the term "stream-of-consciousness" but I don't have a better term for this style of word-weaving --wherein the main character's thoughts on the esoterica of poetry become one with the very real world of mouse droppings, cut fingers, and lost love. Writers will love this sort of validation that we've long suspected; that there is not a conscious balancing of these two separate worlds, the written and the lived. Rather, when you are a writer you inhabit, experience, and interact with this world in a such a way that they are inseparable.
On a letter that Louise Bogen wrote to Ted Roethke: "In fact the letter may be better than any poem she wrote, though she wrote some good ones. But we wouldn't be interested in reading the letter unless she'd written the poems. So once again it's terribly confusing. You need the art in order to love the life."
I'm guessing the appeal of this book will be mainly to writers, poets and students of poetry and writing. I laughed (chortled?) out loud at many things in this book at the same time feeling incredibly frustrated with the main character whose "writer's block" at times seemed more like a case of perverse avoidance. But what is writer's block but a a writer's painful awareness of the fleeting and microscopic significance of any particular piece of writing when considered in the centuries-long tradition of the written language? "What could I possibly write that would be worth the effort? or rather, worth more than the pleasure I'd get from organizing my office, giving the dog a bath, or helping my neighbor install a hardwood floor?" I hate the term "stream-of-consciousness" but I don't have a better term for this style of word-weaving --wherein the main character's thoughts on the esoterica of poetry become one with the very real world of mouse droppings, cut fingers, and lost love. Writers will love this sort of validation that we've long suspected; that there is not a conscious balancing of these two separate worlds, the written and the lived. Rather, when you are a writer you inhabit, experience, and interact with this world in a such a way that they are inseparable.
On a letter that Louise Bogen wrote to Ted Roethke: "In fact the letter may be better than any poem she wrote, though she wrote some good ones. But we wouldn't be interested in reading the letter unless she'd written the poems. So once again it's terribly confusing. You need the art in order to love the life."
poindextrix's review
2.0
This book had lots of fun poetry facts and some great quotable phrases, but it read like a convoluted diary. Not much progression and it got incredibly frustrating after a while.
shimmer's review
3.0
I had a very split reaction to this. I loved the narrator's microscopically focused, wandering voice (which I always love in Baker's fiction) and the way he developed as a character through his clumsy accidents and awkward moments. His procrastination instead of doing the writing he was meant to was hilarious but also bound up with his anxieties as a minor poet and aging lonely man that his shifting, struggling identity became really compelling to me. But even while the way he understood himself largely through the lives and struggles of other, more famous poets was interesting, I also felt like the "lectures" about poetry, meter, etc. became too much -- at some point I started feeling like those technical, academic passages in the story weren't as organically woven into the personal story as I wanted them to be, and they began to feel tangential and repetitive. I resisted the urge to skip over those passages to the next "scene," but I did feel it often as the novel progressed. I should admit, though, that I felt pretty out of my depth concerning most of historical and technical descriptions of poetry, and was reminded how shabby my knowledge of that genre really is -- perhaps better chops on my part would have made those sections integrate more smoothly with the rest of the book.