A review by bonnieg
Modern Poetry: Poems by Diane Seuss

5.0

I don't know much about poetry. My enjoyment or non-enjoyment is a visceral thing and might, to those who do know about poetry, be meaningless or even laughable. And perhaps that is one of the things I love so much about Diane Seuss' work. She democratizes poetry, bats aside the flowery, and acknowledges that in fact, many poets we think of as having been romantic heroes were gross, dirty, unattractive, syphilitic messes. In that community, she finds herself comfortable. I have no reason to believe Seuss is gross, dirty, unattractive, or syphilitic, but she has divorced herself from striving toward or caring about being physically appealing or socially engaging. She speaks in these poems of having cared in the past about that, and when she does it is as if she is speaking of a person with no relation to her current self. She speaks too of poets she admires and both relates herself to and distinguishes herself from them. It is as if she is finding her place in the canon. She tries, as part of that quest I think, to define what modern poetry is. Her poetry is smart, generous, funny, heartbreaking, and vulnerable and is no slave to form. This was clearer in her last collection, frank, where she reinvented the sonnet, than it is here, but though subtler Seuss is as willing here to buck the rules as she was in that book.

As I said at the start, I don't know much about poetry, but Seuss' work excites me, challenges me, amuses me, and makes me reconsider all the rules. That makes it rare and special, at least to me.