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Every Riven Thing: Poems (2010)

by Christian Wiman(Favorite Author)

4.32 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0374150362 (ISBN13: 9780374150365)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: Novels must be either bad or good on the whole; no one reads a novel and says it was worth the read because it had two or three good chapters. Books of poetry, by contrast, are judged by the handful of transcendent poems plucked out from the midst of the merely good enough. The middle of this book is squishy, the poems feeling perfunctory or a little tired even when they are accomplished. But the beginning and the end are worth the price of admission. The title poem showed technical virtuosity while being drive by emotional and spiritual clarity and depth. It made my heart ache. There are only a handful of poems like it in the collection, but I suspect that any one of them is worth the lifetime it took to bring them here.
review 2: It is my 3rd time the ... morefull way through the collection that I am writing this review. After my second time I came to the conclusion that was later reinforced by other reviews I read that it was a poetry collection written by a very notable individual, so it should be read if you have a keen interest in contemporary poetry; however, it doesn't list among my favorite releases by today's poets. It has some truly shining moments, which I've come to enjoy more and more, including the sing-song "To Grasp at Mercury Minnows Are", the interesting story baked into the pair of poems in "One Time", the somewhat post-modernist reflections in "Country in Search of a Symbol", and the ponderous though forceful resolution of "Hammer Is the Prayer", among others. Still the beginning of the book barely holds my interest, and towards the end of the book the images and verse seem to lose their punch and become hazy and irresolute. It's a good collection, but not a great collection, in my opinion. And the hardcover is a bit pricy. less

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