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casparb's review against another edition
a reread of what may be my favourite tate collection. Why's it my favourite? Because it's long, there's more of him
he cannot help but be the icon
2022:
My first proper brush with James Tate and The Ghost Soldiers is ridiculous in all sorts of ways. There's the practical consideration of this being Tate's fifteenth (!!) collection and it's two hundred pages long. It's rare for a poem in it to be under a page in length as well. He's a busy hand.
He's rather an idiosyncratic fellow but surprisingly the closest comparison I could make is Jack Underwood who I have little doubt is in various ways influenced by JT (Justin Timberlake). I find JU (Jammer's Union) more amenable myself but it's tempting to read JT (Jezebel Tendencies) as a kind of raw material. That's a disservice but I'm in circles.
Just had a brief glance at the reviews here to confirm my suspicions that people are whining about whether this is Really Poetry as if that isn't a tired debate. (get over ). I think the blurb hedges its bets and calls this prose poetry which it kind of is but it's probably more accurate to call it one hundred or so Americana-Paranoiac microfictions but aren't we absolutely sick of these labels. Here's another- it's very funny I was amused and came round to it after my initial concerns. I shall read more Tate he's a warm soul
he cannot help but be the icon
2022:
My first proper brush with James Tate and The Ghost Soldiers is ridiculous in all sorts of ways. There's the practical consideration of this being Tate's fifteenth (!!) collection and it's two hundred pages long. It's rare for a poem in it to be under a page in length as well. He's a busy hand.
He's rather an idiosyncratic fellow but surprisingly the closest comparison I could make is Jack Underwood who I have little doubt is in various ways influenced by JT (Justin Timberlake). I find JU (Jammer's Union) more amenable myself but it's tempting to read JT (Jezebel Tendencies) as a kind of raw material. That's a disservice but I'm in circles.
Just had a brief glance at the reviews here to confirm my suspicions that people are whining about whether this is Really Poetry as if that isn't a tired debate. (get over ). I think the blurb hedges its bets and calls this prose poetry which it kind of is but it's probably more accurate to call it one hundred or so Americana-Paranoiac microfictions but aren't we absolutely sick of these labels. Here's another- it's very funny I was amused and came round to it after my initial concerns. I shall read more Tate he's a warm soul
danchibnall's review against another edition
3.0
Some of the better poetry I've read in the past year. It's so unusual. Sometimes I get spooked by what he writes and have to stop and walk around a bit. It's not that he writes about something scary or morbid, but you get this feeling of something immense hovering around you, in your presence. It's as if he's conjuring a ghost through the writing.
haydenreads's review
dark
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
andymoon's review against another edition
1.0
Didn't mind the absurdism of the poems. It's just the writing that I hated. The poems were really more prose, like dream fables with SOOO MUCH dialogue that bogs down the feeling/emotion of the poems. Not really how I like reading poetry/prose free verse/whatever. Struggled to finish this one.
gregory_c's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of the best books I’ve read in any genre, on any subject, bar none. Tate was a master poet.
pturnbull's review
5.0
One hundred surrealist prose poems. They read like dreams. The names of the characters are unimportant. One person blends into another. The landscape changes. The narrative unfolds through dialog. The common factor among them all is a sense of powerlessness. Something, somebody is controlling the drama. Whether it be the war-machine, a secretive corporate agency, God, a dreamer--we are all stuck in a time and place, unable to determine what to do, where to find safety, who to trust. Brilliant but numbing.
debshelf's review
2.0
I've always been a big fan of prose poetry, and I wanted to like these poems more than I did. I hesitate to even call them poems as they're more like a series of vaguely related short stories. "Poems about nothing" is quite an apt description.
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