Negative Positive
Title: Poetry not for you? Read "What We Carry!"
Review: I came to this book as someone who had no patience for poetry. It was something that always bored me in junior high, and that boredom never let up. I think I've repressed most of it, but I still get haunted by memories of iambic pentameter, sonnets, metaphor, synesthaesia, metonymy, yada yada yada. So I was very suspicious when a friend handed me this book and said it was "nothing" like the poems I'd read in junior high. Much to my surprise, though, she was right! There's no metaphors or similies, no "prosody" or rhetorical structure, etc. You get the sense Ms. Laux is just like me, unable to see what (if any) relevance Dickinson or Pound or Keats or the rest of those boring old guys and girls have for poetry. Instead, these are GOOD poems, about feelings and emotions. Look at the title poem--there's not one metaphor in it! I love it, and I've pasted it on the rear window of my Chevette for all the world to see! WE NEED MORE POEMS LIKE IT!
Is the review positive or negative? 