The occasion Bialosky writes about is obviously difficult. And the poems reflect that difficulty. It comes in the sincerity and directness in these poems voice. But I'm unsure why these need to be poems. Obviously, this is more about my personal expectations connected to poetry. But Bialosky's poems are so committed to relating a true story from her past, and their authenticity rests more on the content rather than any poetic craft or form that could add further to the poem's overall meaning. Ye More...

Jill Bialosky, The End of Desire (Knopf, 2001)

I've been waiting for this book for a while. You see, back in autumn or thereabouts, I was planning out a review for a book (Stephen Tapscott's Another Body) that I was going to use to delineate the difference between a good poet and a great one. It was going along swimmingly until Tapscott got great in one section of the book, so I shelved those ideas until I found a book that would fit them. The End of Desire, as it turns out, is that b More...