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A review by brice_mo
Next Day: New and Selected Poems by Cynthia Zarin
2.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!
Cynthia Zarin’s Next Day is a collection of poems culled from an entire career, which makes it more successful as a reflection of its author than as a body of work.
Broadly speaking, these are poems with gradual rotations rather than turns. There aren’t many memorable lines or unexpected images. They are decorated with so many natural objects that they can start to feel garish, like an antique shop without a curatorial hand—a toybox emptied onto the floor. In the late career books represented here, this approach works well, taking on an almost I Spy effect, though the same cannot be said for the earlier poems.
Readers’ enjoyment will depend entirely on their personal poetics. Zarin seems to prioritize form, crafting intricate and precise pieces that—for me—are easier to appraise than they are to appreciate. Unfortunately, it often feels like someone showing you the gears behind a clock face when you asked for the time. There’s a perpetually heightened register and emotional detachment that seems determined to convince readers that these are, in fact, capital-P "Poems."
It’s clear this is an aesthetic decision rather than a question of ability because there are beautiful exceptions, particularly in The Ada Poems and Orbit. These books feel like a better balance between Zarin’s stylistic preoccupations and substantive themes, and I wish I had encountered them without the burden of the surrounding anthology.
Ultimately, Next Day feels like a bit of an anachronism—a product of an era that celebrated the artist’s mystique. These poems often obscure the speaker to the point of anonymity, and for readers who favor transparency and creative risks, there are much more interesting books to read.
Cynthia Zarin’s Next Day is a collection of poems culled from an entire career, which makes it more successful as a reflection of its author than as a body of work.
Broadly speaking, these are poems with gradual rotations rather than turns. There aren’t many memorable lines or unexpected images. They are decorated with so many natural objects that they can start to feel garish, like an antique shop without a curatorial hand—a toybox emptied onto the floor. In the late career books represented here, this approach works well, taking on an almost I Spy effect, though the same cannot be said for the earlier poems.
Readers’ enjoyment will depend entirely on their personal poetics. Zarin seems to prioritize form, crafting intricate and precise pieces that—for me—are easier to appraise than they are to appreciate. Unfortunately, it often feels like someone showing you the gears behind a clock face when you asked for the time. There’s a perpetually heightened register and emotional detachment that seems determined to convince readers that these are, in fact, capital-P "Poems."
It’s clear this is an aesthetic decision rather than a question of ability because there are beautiful exceptions, particularly in The Ada Poems and Orbit. These books feel like a better balance between Zarin’s stylistic preoccupations and substantive themes, and I wish I had encountered them without the burden of the surrounding anthology.
Ultimately, Next Day feels like a bit of an anachronism—a product of an era that celebrated the artist’s mystique. These poems often obscure the speaker to the point of anonymity, and for readers who favor transparency and creative risks, there are much more interesting books to read.