Victor Hernández CruzReseñas

In context, I enjoyed the poems from this volume a lot more here than I did in compilation form in Rhythm, Content, & Flavor. Although there were a few poems to stand out, on the whole the pieces felt thrown together and not as profound as the pieces in Mainland. I will probably return to Cruz but maybe not for a little while.

This was a pretty good overview of Victor Hernandez Cruz's early work. Nothing substitutes reading the original books for context, though, and I wish this volume came with a more rigorous introduction (what you get here are 2 pages of adulation from the publisher). Cruz has an excellent ear for the way language sounds and his wordplay reflects that. I wasn't as taken with a lot of the poems included here as I was with Mainland but that might be an issue of context.

These poems sing high above the reader and it is so easy to be carried away by the melody in them, though they are certainly grounded in craft and structure often only discernible on a second or third reading. For the past year I've been reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry (the 5th looong edition) which has brought me rigorously from Caedmon's Hymn through Milton to about halfway through the book to the Romantics over the course of the last 10 months. Getting back to poems written in the last 30 years is a breath of fresh, fresh air. Given their context in my reading life, I'm not sure whether I enjoyed these poems more intensely for their contemporary references and rhythms but I really enjoyed them. I highly recommend this short volume.

In context, I enjoyed the poems from this volume a lot more here than I did in compilation form in Rhythm, Content, & Flavor. Although there were a few poems to stand out, on the whole the pieces felt thrown together and not as profound as the pieces in Mainland. I will probably return to Cruz but maybe not for a little while.

This was a pretty good overview of Victor Hernandez Cruz's early work. Nothing substitutes reading the original books for context, though, and I wish this volume came with a more rigorous introduction (what you get here are 2 pages of adulation from the publisher). Cruz has an excellent ear for the way language sounds and his wordplay reflects that. I wasn't as taken with a lot of the poems included here as I was with Mainland but that might be an issue of context.

These poems sing high above the reader and it is so easy to be carried away by the melody in them, though they are certainly grounded in craft and structure often only discernible on a second or third reading. For the past year I've been reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry (the 5th looong edition) which has brought me rigorously from Caedmon's Hymn through Milton to about halfway through the book to the Romantics over the course of the last 10 months. Getting back to poems written in the last 30 years is a breath of fresh, fresh air. Given their context in my reading life, I'm not sure whether I enjoyed these poems more intensely for their contemporary references and rhythms but I really enjoyed them. I highly recommend this short volume.