The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers

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Summary: The fluidity of intelligence
Review: I highly recommend this wonderful book. If you enjoy work that challenges and breathes, then pick this book. Amazingly gentle and deliciously tender.

Rating:
Summary: This is not love, it's a baby changing itself.
Review: Unfortunately I can not give this book a positive review. I bought the book based on a recommendation from a friend who knows my tastes in Poetry (Trackl, Jorie Graham, Kinnell). There was a great disparity in the comparisons to say the least. On the surface the language seems poetic. The connections seem deep. It seems as if she has done her homework. However, after the second and third readings it soon becomes apparent that this writer puts on a good front but lacks the depth of a true poet. She begins with an image, a thought, place or concept. By the end she twists it into nothing but a series of words that sound like they might have meaning but in reality they are the words of a writer who couldn't keep it together long enough to finish the connection and insteads just glosses it over with some fruity words. I don't care what anybody says, poetry means and simply because someone strings a few words together this does not make meaning. She writes, "The distances between my body and the bodies of the ones I love: grow. They are limited by coasts. I have a few questions to ask, but I do not know how to break the growing silence. I breathe in the salty mist, walk back along the wild, shifting edge of everything." She does this over and over again. She sets up the reader with something concrete then the flowery language starts with no meaningful connections. She does this over and over again. A true poet holds it together until the very end. She can not.

-George