Title: The Willed vs the Felt
Review: A remarkably self-indulgent first book by a writer too old to be this immature and irresponsible with the language. All formal flair...and very little else. Clover DOES experiment wonderfully and fascinatingly with the surface shimmer of his subjects, but this kind of willed approach to the making of poems results, too often I think, in work that borders on the offensive. (A meditation on the Holocaust, for example, becomes a light-hearted, witty exercise in form.) This is a major award--the Whitman--and likely to make Clover's career. Hopefully he will earn the coming gush of praise with a more deeply felt second book.
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