About half way through this book I realized that I wasn't particularly enjoying it but I was already half way through it and Baker writes in such a way that makes for easy reading and it was a slim 240 pages so I figured, what the hell, I'll just finish it. So I did. And I didn't really like it all that much.
There were brief glimpses of brilliance, per usual of Baker and his observant powers that are microscopic. But they weren't enough to hold my interest in the main subject: poetry. Now, it's a very specific kind of poetry the main character is pondering (who is struggling to complete an introduction to a poetry anthology), which is mostly the history of poetry and I'd heard and read enough of that in college. Poets like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Mary Oliver, Longsfellow, Poe, Louise Bogan, and Roethke are talked about in length. And the dissection of poetry, the importance of the 'rest' at the end of lines, the clinical part of poetry. To some this may be of interest. And many reviewers have remarked that even people with the slightest interest in poetry will enjoy this book...but I disagree. I have a more than slight interest in poetry and I did not enjoy this book. Well, I enjoyed the parts that were not about poetry.
Maybe I'm being too hard on you Mr. Baker. This is all personal preference. You wrote a fine book about poetry which I imagine is a hard thing to do. You said some concrete things about poetry which I also imagine is a hard thing to do.
Some quotes? Why not.
"If you have something to say, say it. Don't save it up. Don't think to yourself, I'm going to build up to the truth I really want to say/ Don't think, In this poem, I'm going to be sneaky and start with this other truth over here, and then I'm going to scamper around a little bit over here...No, slam it in immediately." pg.9
"There's no either-or division with poems. What's made up and what's not made up? What's the varnished truth, what's the unvarnished truth?...There's no nonfictional poetry and fictional poetry. The categories don't exist." pg. 52
"Because so often I think when I'm writing a poem that I need to start in some specific spot. Where I begin becomes so important that I never begin." pg.195
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