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qiaosilin's review
3.0
The News by Rob Taylor is a kind of narrative poetry collection in that it starts from his wife's fifth week of pregnancy—when they discover the news—to the fortieth week. Each poem is titled after the week that it was written during and features a mixture of samples from other works (italicized in the text) and news stories from that week; however, not every week features a news story and not every week has excerpts.
I think what I really like about this book is that it deals with a lot of the commonalities people deal with when having a baby, like ultrasound appointments, birthing classes, anxieties over what to do if the genetic disorder tests come back dire, when to tell people the news and how the conversation will go from there, etc. And then it intercuts news like the protests in Baltimore, the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the Accra floods that resulted in a gas station pipe rupturing and exploding and killing around 200 people, the 2016 US Electon primaries, the Migrant Crisis in Europe, etc. Some of these work, some of them feel a little forced, which is the same way I feel about the excerpts, which are just placed in the text. There's definitely a lot to unpack in them and I think what seems like accidental rhyme but clearly isn't is really quite good. I am also a fan of the rhythm of these poems. It just feels like not enough of the poems feature news stories to really qualify as being a mélange of world news and pregnancy news. Overall, still a very well put together collection and I do like the themes.
My favourites are "Seven Weeks," "Ten Weeks," "Eleven Weeks," "Twelve Weeks," "Fourteen Weeks," "Sixteen Weeks," "Nineteen Weeks," "Twenty-Six Weeks," "Thirty Weeks," "Thirty-Three Weeks," "Thirty-Four Weeks" and "Thirty-Six Weeks."
Side-note: Taylor and his family live in Vancouver, so there are a decent amount of street name and neighbourhood mentions to be like, "Oh, hey!" I don't know where I'm going with that, but thought it was worth a mention in case any other Vancouverites wanted to check out some local poets.
I think what I really like about this book is that it deals with a lot of the commonalities people deal with when having a baby, like ultrasound appointments, birthing classes, anxieties over what to do if the genetic disorder tests come back dire, when to tell people the news and how the conversation will go from there, etc. And then it intercuts news like the protests in Baltimore, the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the Accra floods that resulted in a gas station pipe rupturing and exploding and killing around 200 people, the 2016 US Electon primaries, the Migrant Crisis in Europe, etc. Some of these work, some of them feel a little forced, which is the same way I feel about the excerpts, which are just placed in the text. There's definitely a lot to unpack in them and I think what seems like accidental rhyme but clearly isn't is really quite good. I am also a fan of the rhythm of these poems. It just feels like not enough of the poems feature news stories to really qualify as being a mélange of world news and pregnancy news. Overall, still a very well put together collection and I do like the themes.
My favourites are "Seven Weeks," "Ten Weeks," "Eleven Weeks," "Twelve Weeks," "Fourteen Weeks," "Sixteen Weeks," "Nineteen Weeks," "Twenty-Six Weeks," "Thirty Weeks," "Thirty-Three Weeks," "Thirty-Four Weeks" and "Thirty-Six Weeks."
Side-note: Taylor and his family live in Vancouver, so there are a decent amount of street name and neighbourhood mentions to be like, "Oh, hey!" I don't know where I'm going with that, but thought it was worth a mention in case any other Vancouverites wanted to check out some local poets.
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