I absolutely never read this type of book. But, I found myself unable to stop reading it. I didn't read it continuously but would put it down, think about what I'd read and then come back to it again and again. Thought-provoking and interesting and unexpected. ( )

I really enjoyed the first section which was an autobiographical essay. Shepherd and I are roughly the same age, and both grew up in the Bronx, so there was much I could relate to there.

However, the rest of the book didn't really hold me. This is at least in part my own fault, I suspect, as I prefer to read fiction to poetry, and critical theory essays are not usually something I choose to read unless I am particularly interested in the subject being analyzed. ( )

I feel like this is, in some ways, a book unsure of its audience, which is not unexpected in an anthology that collects essays originally published in a variety of places. The first section is an autobiographical essay that was both a fascinating life story and beautiful writing. The second section was poetics and esthetics that struck me as alternately inacessible, trite, naive and insightful - occasionally all three at once. I get the impression they were very much the product of a school of thought, but not the sort of thing that was particularly useful to people outside that school: several times I found myself making notes of books he should read that covered all this same material decades ago (but aren't generally read by English professors.) The third section is critical essays of individual poets and authors, which were a vaguely interesting read, but as I'd never heard of most of the works being discussed, despite having gone through several periods of devouring modern poetry, I got little more out of it than a reading list. The final section finished the books with some general essays on what and why poetry.

I greatly enjoyed the first and last sections of the book, as a reminder (for someone who occasionally forgets about poetry) of why I need and, and as just plain good prose writing. But the middle two sections left me wishing I was still at college taking poetry workshops, still part of the conversation he was having which largely left me out. ( )

I'm not an other other other other. I've taken a poetry work shop which stopped me from writing poetry and started my reading of poetry, don't care about identify which cliqueish "school" a poet belongs, I'm white, male, heterosexual. I like message poets with lots of context, see the radical Thomas McGrath. I like autobiographical poets, see Robert Penn Warren. Shepherd taught at the Iowa Poetry Work Shop. My audience attendance at a couple of Iowa work shops gave me favorites like Michael Culross, and the local hobo Iowa Blackie. I advocate increasing library data entry. I also loved Southside Chicago and its poetry scene. IOW, I have many close parallels to Mr. Shepherd, if seemingly on the non-other side. OTOH, this month when I went to a restaurant at Goodwill to hear a student play folk guitar, we had one wall of the restaurant bouncing with DJ music from the Southwest H.S. (Macon, GA) prom. On Mothers Day 2008, Southwest H.S. was massively damaged by a tornado. I cannot imagine Reginald Shepherd attending the Southwest prom. He would feel too out of place. But he did graduate from Southwest. My kids attend[ed] Central. As a gay black youth in Macon, GA, Shepherd felt out of place. Believable. 25 year old jerk cousins like Gregory are a common local stereotype. Yet there are several Macon black gays role models that were out of the closet back in Shepherd's time. Much of the otherness that Shepherd writes about seems to be adolescent posturing. There's not much more there than found in a white Macon goth chick or white male Yu-Gi-Oh player. But the posture is much of the point. Shepherd asserts that he is an other other other other. 1) Poet. 2) Of the Bennington School. 3) Gay and 4) Black. But he is not a spokesman, hates being typecasted, and believes that a poem must stand on its own in a Wallace Stevens strength. Shepherd dislikes autobiographical message poetry.

Yet the opening essays is very personal, autobiographical story that doesn't stand on its own. It takes context and history. The opening essays work. Above all else, Shepherd is an engaging, clear writer. "Orpheus" is a worthy read just for the prose. The autobiography is interesting enough.

Then there's the critical essays: yes, urban locales like Chicago can have pastorals. Old news here, with Conrad Aiken, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg and others that I've read. And there's some artsy deconstruction of Alvin Feinman, Jorie Graham, Jean Genet, Samuel R. Delaney, Aaron Shurin, Tim Dlugos, Donald Britton, D. A. Powell, Linda Gregg, William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens. I'm only familiar with Yeats and Stevens, Yet Shepherd's essays are again clear and pointed. I've added Delaney and Britton to my TBR list. And the poetry of Reginald Shepherd.

Reginald Shepherd won't live forever, but he will live longer than his life. He shouldn't be bored, and he's not boring. I am glad that Shepherd as made my short life better. ( )

I'm going to resist rating this. I found the book to be rather self-indulgent, and academic without being deeply intellectual. The sort of thing that gets one tenure without necessarily getting one read. Intelligent without being insightful.

It may just be, however, that I simply don't have sufficient interest in the "identity" part of his project. In my humble opinion, the overly-introspective artist/academic has been over-explored.