Matthew Gavin Frank

What this book at first appears to be: a tour through all fifty US states highlighting a specific regional cuisine for each one and considering that dish in the context of that state's culture and history, with some personal reflections from the author.

What this book actually is: 415 pages of weird poetry masquerading as prose, interspersed with recipes. An, unfortunately, it is really not my kind of poetry. It's rambly, disjointed, and chaotic. (Are you supposedly writing a chapter about corn chowder, but what you you really want is to spend it talking about your adolescent masturbation habits? No problem! Just throw out a bunch of bizarre metaphors that let you pretend the two subjects actually have anything whatsoever to do with each other. It's poetic!) It feels self-indulgent, too, as if the author is approaching the entire country as a giant dinner table upon which to serve himself his own family issues. It also feels disingenuous, as he appears to be pretending that he comes from, or at least has a deep personal connection with, every single one of those fifty states. His explanation, in the preface, is that when he talks about something his uncle said or did in a particular place, what he really means is, y'know, somebody's uncle said or did that, at some point. Which... OK, whatever, dude. Oh, and he also does that thing where you notice some kind of superficial linguistic connection between the words used to describe two things and then act like it constitutes some deep connection between the things themselves, an approach that can deeply irritate me when it's taken too seriously or relied on too much.

Rating: I hesitate a moment before rating this, because I'm certain that there are people out there for whom this particular kind of writing is 100% their jam, and who might see lyricism and insight where I just see boring pretentiousness. But I am not those people, I am me. And I give it 2/5 and call it lucky to have that.… (plus d'informations)

Some writers write blah blah blah, some writers think to say blah blah blah, some writers yearn to express blah blah blah. But this book is just blah. The author thought to separate the lines into couplet stanzas mainly for no apparent reason. Do they rhyme? No. There is also a cast of characters at the front of the book but does that mean this work has a plot? Pshhh. Don't count on it.

Full disclosure, I got this book submitting my manuscript to the publisher. To say I don't get poetry these days almost says the least of things. But if this is representative of what's being written then I can see why nobody reads the stuff. What ever happened to the enthrallment of eloquent language? The music? The description? Hell, the imagery? It seems these days poets are lost in a nebulous pluralism that says their work is valid no matter the amount of growth or development it's been through. Bukowski railed against the professors who wrote to keep tenure but now I could imagine those same professors praising this work.

It makes me fucking sick. Where is the poet with some ambition? Where's the hero Walt Whitman wrote about? Where is the man with the balls to crown himself the laureate? What's wrong with reaching for the top always even if that top is only reached for the 15-minutesiest of 15 minutes? Allen Ginsberg may have only written Howl and Other Poems and nothing of note after that. So what? He caught it. And he could say after that forever that those were the days because those indeed were.

I just don't know what the hell publishers want these days. They'd rather something "fit their catalogue" than it be good. Are they jealous of the true poetic talent out there? I mean, forget about me for a second, I'm sure there are other people out there now days that write in the right way. Don't tell me all this shit is part of dead history. The first piece of written western literature is alive today and it's called The Iliad. You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck it. I'm clearly wrong in wanting more honest criticism. Let's just praise all the trash out there.… (plus d'informations)