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optimisticducky's review against another edition
3.0
Read this for one of my grad courses.
Still not a fan of poetry, but I surprisingly liked a few of these. Smith did an excellent job of curating these poems and I could at least appreciate them better than other poetry books I had to read. Some of them I'd consider reading again, but others fell a little flat for me. Oh well.
Still not a fan of poetry, but I surprisingly liked a few of these. Smith did an excellent job of curating these poems and I could at least appreciate them better than other poetry books I had to read. Some of them I'd consider reading again, but others fell a little flat for me. Oh well.
losethegirl's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
reflective
4.0
I really enjoyed this anthology. It had a huge variety of works, all of which were interesting. A great reflection on American life today. Would recommend!
grumpwizard's review against another edition
3.0
This collection is a great taste of many different styles of contemporary American poets; hand-picked by Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. Smith’s eye for the craft (Evident in both her Pulitzer-Prize winning work Life on Mars as well as her fantastic, daily podcast The Slowdown) highlights voices unfamiliar to the layperson. Together these works paint a picture of America, for all that it is.
senid's review against another edition
5.0
This is an anthology that grabbed ahold of me. I found poets I want to read more from, and that is one of my reasons for reading anthologies. Most poets in this collection are teaching in mfa programs currently. Excellent introduction to a group of poets I mostly had not read.
lindsayb's review against another edition
5.0
That was really a quite spectacular collection of poems. They weren't all for me, but I checked the ones that I particularly enjoyed (which were well over half), and now I have a slew of new-to-me poets to check out.
darrin's review
This little anthology sort of took my breath away. Some of the poets were names I knew but most were new to me. One poem that really stood out for me was In Defense of Small Towns by Oliver de la Paz. Written in 2 line stanzas, it is a longish poem and starts out with the narrator hating life in the small town of his past but then each stanza carefully describes a past memory so that you see the evolution of his thoughts until finally the ending describes how he wants to take his son back there to the small town of my youth and ends with,
to run with a cattail in his hand and watch as its seeds
fly weightless as though nothing mattered, as though
the little things we tell ourselves about our pasts stay there,
rising slightly and just out of reach.
I picked up the two books of poetry by de la Paz they had at our local library, [b:Post Subject: A Fable|20522275|Post Subject A Fable|Oliver de la Paz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390431791s/20522275.jpg|36714853] and [b:Names Above Houses|21860768|Names Above Houses|Oliver de la Paz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1410771512s/21860768.jpg|77715]. I am looking forward to reading them as well as many other books by poets I discovered in this book.
Definitely find it if you can.
to run with a cattail in his hand and watch as its seeds
fly weightless as though nothing mattered, as though
the little things we tell ourselves about our pasts stay there,
rising slightly and just out of reach.
I picked up the two books of poetry by de la Paz they had at our local library, [b:Post Subject: A Fable|20522275|Post Subject A Fable|Oliver de la Paz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390431791s/20522275.jpg|36714853] and [b:Names Above Houses|21860768|Names Above Houses|Oliver de la Paz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1410771512s/21860768.jpg|77715]. I am looking forward to reading them as well as many other books by poets I discovered in this book.
Definitely find it if you can.
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