Author: James Rother

Ghost Girl by Amy Gerstler. Penguin Books, 2004. 67pp, $16.

First, a problem of definition. This latest catch-all of Amy Gerstler’s, Ghost Girl, is really less a “book of poems” as such than it is a bringing together, a propulsive gleaning of all the notions of a poetic nature that happened to pass her way since Medicine, her last such collection and the eleventh to appear before the one under review.… continue reading...

Where Shall I Wander by John Ashbery, Ecco Press, 2005. $22.95

When even a very fine poet is able to lob twenty-five volumes of verse into circulation in no more than twice that number of years, there are bound to be, as age withers and custom stales, trace-amounts of dross visible amid the threads of gold and silver.… continue reading...

Talking with Poets. Edited by Harry Thomas. Handsel Books, 2002. $22.00

Unless very skillfully choreographed, interviews with poets are at best temporizing exercises (to show one is still alive creatively); at worst, a crushing bore.… continue reading...

Music and Suicide by Jeff Clark. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004. 67 pp. $20

Music and Suicide is Jeff Clark’s fourth book of poems and its advance billing in publishers’ blurbs seizes glowingly on this poet’s growing reputation as an “unclassifiable classic in underground American writing.”… continue reading...

Collected Poems of Robert Lowell. Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2003. 1181 pages. $45.

Three years ago the Collected Poems everyone was talking about was J.… continue reading...

Now the Green Blade Rises by Elizabeth Spires. W. W. Norton and Co., 2004. $12.95.

As Reviewed By: James Rother

Since 1981, when her first collection of poems, Globe (1981), made her name a watchword for serenity and poise, Elizabeth Spires has seen her body of work not just praised, but held up as a role model for other poets.… continue reading...

Generations by Pattiann Rogers. Penguin Books, 2004. $16.

Generations, the title of Pattiann Rogers’s new book of poems, is not one seized upon lightly. She has come to it, having entered upon the mysteries it entails over some eight books of poetry that span nearly a quarter-century.… continue reading...

New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004 by Carl Dennis. Penguin Books, 2004. $18.

“Thinking poets,” if the prevailing folklore is to be believed, are not just thin on the ground, few and far between, and countable only on thumbs; they are rarer even than hens’ false teeth, and with the passing of such giants as A.… continue reading...

The Rest of Love by Carl Phillips. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2004. 70 pages. $20.

There have always been poets—all right, there have always been a few poets—who, as was said of the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, could produce examples of their art as effortlessly as an apple tree produces apples.… continue reading...

Chinese Whispers by John Ashbery. FSG, 2002. $22.00.

As Reviewed By: James Rother

The career of John Ashbery continues the poetic perpetuum mobile of our time.… continue reading...

New British Poetry. Edited by Don Paterson and Charles Simic. Graywolf Press, 2005. $16

As Reviewed By: James Rother

It’s been a while since the relative healthiness of relations between poets on this side of the pond and those still lodged in the mother country have been top priorities with editors of American literary journals.… continue reading...

Western Art by Deborah Greger. Penguin Poets Series, 2004. $18.

As Reviewed By: James Rother

Debora Greger is one of those poets who can’t help obsessing about art’s hidden agenda—the one lurking beneath layers of veneration which for centuries have surrounded art with more awe and wonder than anything outside of revealed religion.… continue reading...

Alan Williamson, The Pattern More Complicated: New and Selected Poems. University of Chicago Press, 2004. 245 pp.

As Reviewed By: James Rother

At your next party, try this on your poetry-loving guests.… continue reading...

Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire by Diane Ackerman. Harper Collins, 2002. $22.95

Until “poet, essayist, and naturalist” Diane Ackerman, the only celebrity from Waukegan, Illinois able to toss off jokes and fiddle off-key simultaneously was Jack Benny.… continue reading...