Paper Boat

Rating:
Summary: Complaint
Review: I voted that I liked Castle's review and found it helpful, but no sign of that has shown up. Why?

Rating:
Summary: A fresh new voice in MN poetry
Review: In a regional poetic environment dominated by bad prose hacked into seemingly arbitrary line lengths, Cullen Bailey Burns has delivered a surprising and refreshing debut collection...literally overflowing with lyricism and musicality. Her creative wordplay and precise enjambment combine to form delightful verse that both pleases the eye and rolls off the tongue.

But her work hits its mark only about 50% of the time...and it's not even until the middle of the book that the reader sees Burns at her best. The remaining poems suffer from weak endings, unclear purpose, or else never really move beyond trite musings.

"Paper Boat" is a 2004 Minnesota Book Award nominee for poetry. To be nominated alongside literary greats like Wang Ping and Louise Erdrich is both an honor and a challenge. Let's hope Burns focuses on the latter and does not rush her sophomore collection, but instead produces a work of weightier themes that is also substantial enough in size to withstand more ruthless editing and culling. There are far too many poets---regionally and nationally---who seem content to produce self-indulgent verse about gardens and kids and grief and parents and students and other tired, middle-class subjects. To remain relevant, Burns will need to expand her horizons.

Rating:
Summary: nice sentiment, but flat poems
Review: While I concede that this book is heartfelt, the execution of the poems themselves is not that spectacular. The use of language is unoriginal, often supremely dry and well, ordinary for lack of a better term, and Burns doesn't have a particularly keen grasp of the use of the lyric is a way that rises above the obvious. Ultimately disappointing, because heartfelt sentiment alone does not poetry make. Too many books get attention just because someone had a tragedy in their lives. Lets see if Burns can write about anything else with any effect

Rating:
Summary: Complaint
Review: _Paper Boat_ lyrically captures the magic that occurs between the lines of our daily lives. Cullen Bailey Burns transforms the details of her own life into an exhilarating experience for her readers that is at once emotional and philosophical. This collection of poetry does what most excellent literature does: it reaches its readers on an individual level ("this is my unique story") and on a public level ("there are aspects of my story that are your story and your story and your story").

Burns' unique story co-exists with her sorrow at the unexpected death of her only sister. While Burns focuses in many poems on her regular companion, grief, she also connects on the wavelength of poetry with "someone else's calamity"(26). We have all heard "how the past / rattles its bones until they sound like words" (16). Poems such as "The Word for Building Her Back," "On Longing," and "Milk Money" offer an ache so beautiful it is hard to let go. But that is exactly what happens in the last poem, "I Have Made a Paper Boat." Burns says good-bye to her sister: "I have made a paper boat / and set words aflame upon water, / a message the lake / carries to the dead." She bids "her safe passage" (53).

For regular readers of poetry, _Paper Boat_ is a debut book you will not want to miss. Any reader experiencing a difficult loss would be consoled by this magnificent and heartfelt collection.

Rating:
Summary: An Important New Voice in American Poetry
Review: _Paper Boat_ lyrically captures the magic that occurs between the lines of our daily lives. Cullen Bailey Burns transforms the details of her own life into an exhilarating experience for her readers that is at once emotional and philosophical. This collection of poetry does what most excellent literature does: it reaches its readers on an individual level ("this is my unique story") and on a public level ("there are aspects of my story that are your story and your story and your story").

Burns' unique story co-exists with her sorrow at the unexpected death of her only sister. While Burns focuses in many poems on her regular companion, grief, she also connects on the wavelength of poetry with "someone else's calamity"(26). We have all heard "how the past / rattles its bones until they sound like words" (16). Poems such as "The Word for Building Her Back," "On Longing," and "Milk Money" offer an ache so beautiful it is hard to let go. But that is exactly what happens in the last poem, "I Have Made a Paper Boat." Burns says good-bye to her sister: "I have made a paper boat / and set words aflame upon water, / a message the lake / carries to the dead." She bids "her safe passage" (53).

For regular readers of poetry, _Paper Boat_ is a debut book you will not want to miss. Any reader experiencing a difficult loss would be consoled by this magnificent and heartfelt collection.