Negative Positive
Title: sigh
Review: Perhaps early success is an utter curse; I begin to wish no one were allowed to publish a 1st book till they turned 35 (note: burn your MFA theses!) Early success seems to engender a pavlovian response: what we're praised for, we do again & again. And so, here, we have Volkman repeating herself for 50-odd pages, saying nothing with stylistic cleverness equivalent to a parlor game, relying on style as a crutch to mask a startling substance deficit. One, two, three poems glimpsed here & there in our best journals were riveting; seeing 20-some all together will engender much wincing in those of us who had our hopes up. Still, I hold out hope for book three--may it be a careful slow while in coming--
Is the review positive or negative? 