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A review by cstefko
Soft Targets by Deborah Landau
5.0
4.75 stars
Nearly perfect, Soft Targets is an incredibly poignant collection for our current political/environmental times. You know how book blurbs often call books "vital and necessary?" The description actually fits for this one. Landau commits to the concept of "soft targets" and the results are brilliant. The language is both playful and devastating, mirroring the whiplash of everyday life when you're plugged into the news cycle. Landau isn't the first to write about the theme of how to reconcile enjoyment of life with all of the inequality, violence, and environmental injustice in the world, but she executes it so impeccably. Only docking slightly because the collection does lose just a bit of steam at the end. Still probably the best collection I've read this year, and it's been a great year for poetry.
This would be a good one to read alongside Ilya Kaminsky's [b:Deaf Republic: Poems|40121980|Deaf Republic Poems|Ilya Kaminsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1527398356s/40121980.jpg|62223064], lots of parallels.
Nearly perfect, Soft Targets is an incredibly poignant collection for our current political/environmental times. You know how book blurbs often call books "vital and necessary?" The description actually fits for this one. Landau commits to the concept of "soft targets" and the results are brilliant. The language is both playful and devastating, mirroring the whiplash of everyday life when you're plugged into the news cycle. Landau isn't the first to write about the theme of how to reconcile enjoyment of life with all of the inequality, violence, and environmental injustice in the world, but she executes it so impeccably. Only docking slightly because the collection does lose just a bit of steam at the end. Still probably the best collection I've read this year, and it's been a great year for poetry.
This would be a good one to read alongside Ilya Kaminsky's [b:Deaf Republic: Poems|40121980|Deaf Republic Poems|Ilya Kaminsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1527398356s/40121980.jpg|62223064], lots of parallels.