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Title: This won the National Book Critics Circle Award?
Review: This is just the type of book that wins these types of awards. Goldbarth's poems tend to be prosey and verbose. He has some good ideas behind the poems, and a few good lines. But that isn't what we read poetry for--ideas. Where are the images that can't be forgotten? Where is the play that language does so well? This is a poet like Jorie Graham, one who tries to say something, then gets bogged down with free association. There is some good stuff in the poems, but as a whole they are a let down. The opening poem, "Library" happens to be a poem where this works, but it is a list poem, and you can get a little wordy in those. The book runs a little long for a poetry collection (over 120 pages). Goldbarth could have used a good editor cull it some.
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