Matt Rasmussen

I won't even pretend to believe I have anything approaching the 'poetic sensibility' that TS Eliot mentioned as a necessity to appreciating Djuana Barnes' work 'Nightwood'.

But after having read this text (for a poetry class) I have to say I'm a bit humbled, and in a bit of awe. I haven't read as much poetry as I have prose, so my pool of references and standards regarding this text are, admittedly, quite limited. But that all having been said, this is something of a masterwork that deserves show more appreciation, merit, and is every bit worth the awards and praise showered upon it.

It tells from the poetically skewed perspective of many voices the suicide of the author/poet's brother. While not immediately readable or even approachable in stretches...it's still an intimately humane and work of passion and even warmth. This is something, I may add, I found lacking in the mess of Ginsburg's oeuvre, and the stilted, cultured, cold of TS Eliot (specifically in The Wasteland, less so in other works).

So, read this work, please, it deserves it and will be a simultaneous palliative and refresher to your poetic and literary sensibilities. show less

"A life is lead by learning,
before each breath,

how to breathe."
-Vacation Cage


"All night, snow fell
like ash through a glass of water."
-Eulogy in X Parts, pg. 39

I hadn't heard of this book until someone recommended it to me (I am fairly new to contemporary poetry). I usually don't like dark poetry- the meditative kind is more my type (Mary Oliver and Ted Kooser). However, I enjoyed this book in spite of my initial doubt about it. The imagery is wonderful; the topic is very heavy.

The deer - suicide - hands poems are so, so good. Some of the others are less moving and would be good in isolation, but not next to such starkness.