A review by wandering_not_lost
Dome of the Hidden Pavilion: New Poems by James Tate

3.0

Quirky, surreal prose poems that started to feel like a slog toward the end. Part of the problem was the same tone throughout, and not enough variation in topic. Each poem was its own little story, usually full of dialogue and movement, but then once the "scene" was set, some fantastical thing happened, and then either the "story" would resolve to a pseudophilosophical kind of conclusion about the quirks and surreality of life or...there wouldn't really be a conclusion, and the poem would be left feeling like I'm being told a story with no point. One could no doubt analyze these to death, about how this one is a commentary on global warming, that on the environment, that on terrorism and such, but the poems are almost spare, very prose-like approach, rather than poetic, and after I was done with them no analysis could really make them interesting to me for their own sake. One exception: "The Encyclopedia Salesman". This book was worth the time for that one poem, since it had a lovely and poignant theme that actually felt deliberate, but that was the only poem in the collection to really evoked any emotion in me.