Title: Small "tate-ers" for a poet of his caliber.
Review: James Tate's most recent offering, "Distance from Loved Ones," hit bookstores recently, after much hype and anticipation. Up to this point, I had suspended my judgment on the pernicious poet, but now I no longer straddle the fence on this issue. The title poem promises insight and melancholy, but quickly strays into a graphic erotic narrative involving his last several pets (all of which died mysterious deaths). The associative peregrinations he offers attempt to travel the road between the heart and the mind but never make it past his throbbing libido. I understand that he is a "surrealist," but this slab of perversions is much too real for me. Tate is an unholy cross between Neitzche and Andy Griffith, and frankly, the only way you may possibly glean something from this tour de FARCE is if you don your standard issue goth trenchcoat and hit the local coffee house.
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