For someone who said that young white male authors are having trouble getting published, I expected better. I feel like if you’re going to talk all that nonsense, the least you could do is be a decent poet/writer.

Joyce Carol Oates is one of those writers that gets shove down your throat if you’ve ever had the chance of taking any writing workshops. Personally, I did like a couple of her story stories. Her poetry on the other hand is lackluster. I’m a big fan of narrative poems but the ones in this collection reads like short stories if anything else. The repetition felt weird and out of place at times. “Drown together in his car in Lake Chippewa./ It was a bright cold starry night on Lake Chippewa./ Lake Chippewas was…” Stop it, we get it, this takes place in Lake Chippewa. The two poems that are a list of “because” statements are just lazy and didn’t go anywhere.

The two poems that deals with China caught me off guard but told me everything I need to know. It’s giving white feminism vibes, which I expected nothing less from Oates. My biggest pet peeve is white poets using atrocities that happened in other people’s countries for shock value. Not making any excuses or arguing against the human rights abuses committed by the Chinese government but the phrase “pot calling the kettle black” exists. Americans’ obsession with China and “commies” is funny because I feel like it’s a one sided beef. 

favorites- palliative, jubilate, apocalypso 

This is my first introduction to Joyce Carol Oates and it was brilliant. One of the poems in particular titled: Edward Hopper’s “Eleven A.M., 1926” is named for the painting and it is the most realistic and true way I’ve seen anyone write about that feeling. 

Adult
Nonfiction
Poetry collection 

4 stars

I’m not sure if I’ve ever read anything by Oates in my life and it’s a name I’ve seen on books and whatnot for decades but I didn’t know what I was going into with this one.

These poems include heinous bits of American history, some so disturbing that I had to put my e-reader down temporarily  to either look up the full story behind the poem or because the content was so shocking and discomforting that I needed a moment before continuing. Topics include psychological experiments with babies and animals, abortion, war, and more.