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Keith Waldrop. Analogies of Escape. 1997. 78 pp.
I have no memory of acquiring this book or of ever reading it before, though obviously it belongs to me because it was in a box of my books. Unfortunately Waldrop is a poet who says absolutely nothing to me. He seems dull and humorless. I just don't see the point of it, though, as with Rehm, it seems on the surface like well-written poetry in a kind of generic style--of which numerous poets writing today would be capable.
Feel free to sing Waldrop's praises in the comments. I will not crush you like little ants this time.
2 comentarios:
Waldrop is a very slight, short man with a very long white beard, who reads very quietly. He has a very wry, dry, odd sense of humor - his poetry floats in an atmosphere of humor, dread, melancholy, spiritual questioning... something Poe-ish and Mallarme-like about him... he's actually quite a humorist - established a very funny theatre group called Wastepaper Theatre that ran for years here in Providence, featured a series of wacky short plays by various locals... his prose memoir "Light While There is Light" is very evocative of his backroads Arkansas roots - his mother's half-crazed religiosity, the streak of hillbilly criminality (his con-man brother)...
I've never been a great fan of the strain of fey frenchified postmodernism he publishes at Burning Deck with his wife Rosmarie, but I have a lot of respect for him nevertheless... an unusual poet, it probably doesn't always come across in his sparse, spare poems.
p.s. there are some Burning Deck books, however, which I've really liked, & break the mold of the Brown-Writing-Program-grad-student form they sometimes publish... like Michael Gizzi's books, Jaimy Gordon's hilarious writing, Dallas Weibe's stories...
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