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gvenezia 's review for:
American Melancholy: Poems
by Joyce Carol Oates
Pop Culture Melancholy: In which a celebrated author commits her musings on American culture to verse.
The musings are mostly just okay.
There are some weird, cold, atonal poems about psychology experiments, including the cliched Milgram. I've never read any poems about social science, Oates's examples didn't inspire much confidence in their potential.
There's a long, somewhat uncomfortable ode to Marlon Brando—man of many tribulations and triumphs.
There's a very Billy-Collins, serious-cheeky concrete poem about a kite that's about America.
The best poem is a tribute to William Carlos William and it borrows his style.
The shortest poems hold the most potential, but seems to stop too short:
The best stanza that does stand well alone is the last one (context: "In hospice time ceases . . . Until at last the deepest sigh of a lifetime . . .):
The musings are mostly just okay.
There are some weird, cold, atonal poems about psychology experiments, including the cliched Milgram. I've never read any poems about social science, Oates's examples didn't inspire much confidence in their potential.
There's a long, somewhat uncomfortable ode to Marlon Brando—man of many tribulations and triumphs.
There's a very Billy-Collins, serious-cheeky concrete poem about a kite that's about America.
The best poem is a tribute to William Carlos William and it borrows his style.
The shortest poems hold the most potential, but seems to stop too short:
"Exsanguination"
Life as it unspools
ever more eludes
examination
We wonder what is best—
exsanguination in a rush,
or in 1,000 small slashes.
The best stanza that does stand well alone is the last one (context: "In hospice time ceases . . . Until at last the deepest sigh of a lifetime . . .):
After such struggle
you must love
the unrippled dark
water in which a
the perfect cold O
of the moon floats.