Review by Library Journal Review
McPherson (English, Univ. of California, Davis; How To Be This Man) is one of those quiet poets who's been publishing steadily since the early 1970s, mostly with university presses. Yet many readers would be hard-pressed to recall a single poem of hers. Some might say she has no style, nothing to call her own. This book contains quite the range: prose poems, historical pieces, poems interweaving quotations (including footnotes), dense poems, and simplistic poems. And emotion's difficult to come by-even works about illness and suicide seem purposely distanced and impersonal, e.g., "Post-Op, Medical Humanities" ("Compared to my husband's kiss/ during a camera's long violation/ of the nautilus/ membranes of my inner Cinerama,/ this process is brief/ and the nurse has studied haiku") and "Suicidology" ("When we the living feel our dead's hand-/ That's how we glean we are both./ I hold his fingers, slightly blanched/ Flat butter beans, once climbers"). McPherson is one more poet's name to remember, and this is one more book to read and quickly forget. Recommended only for the most comprehensive collections.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with Soho Weekly News, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Library Journal Review
