Reviews
Not many books of poems put you in mind of Robert Penn Warren, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the brainiac whimsy of McSweeney's quarterly at the same time. In his first book, LAWRENCE BOOTH'S BOOK OF VISIONS (Yale University, cloth, $19; paper, $12), Maurice Manning displays not just terrific cunning but terrific aim -- he nails his images the way a restless boy, up in a tree with a slingshot, nails anything sentient that wanders into view.
Publishers Weekly:
equal parts carnivorous nightmare, Freudian pastoral, and deep-fired family romance.
In his third collection, Yale Younger Poets prize–winner Manning goes for a new twist on the traditional genre of pastoral poetry: he praises nature, but also engages in a postmodern conversation with a version of a higher power, which he calls "Boss."
Haunting and funny, innovative and heartening, this collection of seventy untitled, unpunctuated poems features a nameless land laborer talking to his creator, whom he calls 'boss.' Not a religious book in the traditional sense, this is rather one of questions, wonder, and, at times, sadness.
Read more about this topic: Maurice Manning (poet)
Famous quotes containing the word reviews:
“Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week’s. Different books—same reviews.”
—John Osborne (1929–1994)
“The skilful Nymph reviews her force with care:
Let Spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)