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Title: Little More Than Precious Verse
Review: Rick Barot, like a handful of other younger poets, comes highly recommended by many. I was actually quite excited to sit down with his book when I got it. Unfortunately, this is another first book filled with poems about visual art and high culture. Very little happens here outside the world of Art. You have to wonder if this younger generation has a camp for a select few where all they read and study is Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Amy Clampitt, and their poetic offspring J.D. McClatchy, Henri Cole, and Elizabeth Spires. So many of the poems in this book are cold, dull, artful but lacking, for a better word, soul. This book is not very different from books by Barot's contemporaries also under the spell of Bishop: Quan Barry, Pimone Triplett, C. Dale Young, etc. If one had to read one of these poets, read Quan Barry. At least there seems to be a passion behind her use of culture and high lyricism and not just a need to sound intelligent.
