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goodverbsonly's review against another edition
3.0
sometimes i feel like i'm being beaten over the head with his opinions, sometimes the poems are too dense to even read because you have to go in with a whole lot of background knowledge. this is a Personal Problem because the one poem that drew mainly from the Aeneid was very awesome and I loved it a lot. On the other hand, sometimes the poems are just too long and probably could have been much shorter.
EDIT 4/1/20:
I still am not a fan of this collection, but I was certainly able to pick out a couple of poems I liked a little bit more (hence, changing the rating from 2 to 3 stars). However: the collection requires too much context for it be useful or even readable to pretty much anyone besides Seidel himself. It's sort of a labor-intensive process to read through a single one of these poems, and at the end of one there doesn't seem to be much of a point. They're not just dense, but far too broad and try to tackle social issues head on, in, for example, a poem about the loss of a loved one, and sometimes, you just have to sigh, and say: really, WHY?
EDIT 4/1/20:
I still am not a fan of this collection, but I was certainly able to pick out a couple of poems I liked a little bit more (hence, changing the rating from 2 to 3 stars). However: the collection requires too much context for it be useful or even readable to pretty much anyone besides Seidel himself. It's sort of a labor-intensive process to read through a single one of these poems, and at the end of one there doesn't seem to be much of a point. They're not just dense, but far too broad and try to tackle social issues head on, in, for example, a poem about the loss of a loved one, and sometimes, you just have to sigh, and say: really, WHY?
sirhe's review against another edition
5.0
"and then you have to go out and vote Because we live in a democracy and you can’t simply float Your life away playing with rubber duckies. Sure, they’re cute bright yellow"
-poet at seventy eight
-poet at seventy eight
crookedtreehouse's review against another edition
1.0
Despite reading at least a hundred poetry collections a year, I don't often review them. I just felt it was important to acknowledge that it's been a long time since I've read something so hateful and artless as this book of wet, fetid garbage. Misogyny? Check. Racism? Check. Oddly specific bigotry? Check. Written by an archaic White guy who chooses to write from a creepy, violent aesthetic to "challenge" readers? Check.
This reads like the kind of garbage that people in the 90s wrote to be Edgy. But by the 90s, this guy had already been spewing garbage for thirty years. Much of it, rightfully, unpublished.
If you enjoy listening to a bigot on a bus tell you about why he hates whichever generalized community he (and it's almost always a he) hates, this collection is fo you. Otherwise, there are millions of poetry collections in the world that deserve your attention more than this.
This reads like the kind of garbage that people in the 90s wrote to be Edgy. But by the 90s, this guy had already been spewing garbage for thirty years. Much of it, rightfully, unpublished.
If you enjoy listening to a bigot on a bus tell you about why he hates whichever generalized community he (and it's almost always a he) hates, this collection is fo you. Otherwise, there are millions of poetry collections in the world that deserve your attention more than this.
davenash's review against another edition
4.0
Everyone has heard about the man from Nantucket. This is more poetic version of that with some anti republican and NYC references thrown in.
goodverbsonly's review
3.0
sometimes i feel like i'm being beaten over the head with his opinions, sometimes the poems are too dense to even read because you have to go in with a whole lot of background knowledge. this is a Personal Problem because the one poem that drew mainly from the Aeneid was very awesome and I loved it a lot. On the other hand, sometimes the poems are just too long and probably could have been much shorter.
EDIT 4/1/20:
I still am not a fan of this collection, but I was certainly able to pick out a couple of poems I liked a little bit more (hence, changing the rating from 2 to 3 stars). However: the collection requires too much context for it be useful or even readable to pretty much anyone besides Seidel himself. It's sort of a labor-intensive process to read through a single one of these poems, and at the end of one there doesn't seem to be much of a point. They're not just dense, but far too broad and try to tackle social issues head on, in, for example, a poem about the loss of a loved one, and sometimes, you just have to sigh, and say: really, WHY?
EDIT 4/1/20:
I still am not a fan of this collection, but I was certainly able to pick out a couple of poems I liked a little bit more (hence, changing the rating from 2 to 3 stars). However: the collection requires too much context for it be useful or even readable to pretty much anyone besides Seidel himself. It's sort of a labor-intensive process to read through a single one of these poems, and at the end of one there doesn't seem to be much of a point. They're not just dense, but far too broad and try to tackle social issues head on, in, for example, a poem about the loss of a loved one, and sometimes, you just have to sigh, and say: really, WHY?
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