Iron Horse Literary Review

Fall 2004 Book Reviews

Letters to Jane

Hayden Carruth. New York: Ausable Press, 2004. $24.00

    Helplessness is a large and fixed part of the sadness we feel for our friends' troubles, especially when we are physically distant.  The knowledge that Carruth could do nothing to help his friend Jane Kenyon, poet and also wife of the poet Donald Hall, defeat the cancer that eventually took her life in 1995, motivated Carruth to write the letters that comprise this slim volume.

     Sending sentiments of encouragement and love from himself and his wife, he first . . .

 

The Charge

Patrick Donnelly.  New York: Ausable Press, 2003. $14.00

     . . . Donnelly is not a poet of superfluous details or emotion.  The clear accessibility of his writing immediately invites the reader inside his world, which is largely the grief-stricken culture of men with AIDS.  He makes that world familiar and inhabitable through The Charge's archetypal elements, which ultimately appeal to all of us.  Patrick Donnelly's book is about sexuality, but it is not about sexual difference, not really, and this is what makes it shine so.  Donnelly succeeds in transforming autobiography into archetype . . .

 

The Year We Studied Women

Bruce Snider. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. $14.95

    . . . In the end, I would say that I thoroughly enjoyed the poems, but very few are truly memorable.  I'm not haunted or unsettled by the language or the subject--and that troubles me because it confirms what Robert Hass said of much free verse poetry at least a decade ago.  Too many free verse poets rely on the difficulty and boldness of their subject to carry the writing.  Basically, there are few surprises in Bruce Snider's book, though it is imminently readable, and its organization is engaging. . . .

 

All of these books are available at Amazon.com

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