Squandermania

by Don Share

Don Share's latest collection, "Squandermania", is a book of poems that are slightly death-haunted and studded with references to marriage and fatherhood, geology and biology.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2007

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know what to expect from Don Share when I got this book. But it was worth spending the money I didn't have. The poems here are *fast,* they move at high speed. The long title poem in particular blew me away: the hairpins turns, the sudden, but perfect changes in tone, register, timbre and distant. It was a thrill.

Not every poem in here is great, some are little thin, and just didn't surprise me. But I'm giving it the max rating for it's overall strength, and that killer title poem. It one of those that you'd give you left arm to have written.

I don't yet have anything very cogent to say about the content, the what's it about of the book. Share is pulling in concerns about us as a whole, as well as concerns specific is individuals. But the book doesn't have the weaknesses of either political or confessional poetry. This is becuase to these things: an allusive style that keeps flying along and doesn't get bogged down in either sincerity or irony, his sense of humor which flashes out unexpectedly, and just how smart these poems are. Not erudite, not PhD-y, but smart about where they're going, what they're doing and what they're after. Like the best poems, they are flanking manuevers pursuing the real.

[Philip Nikolayev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked Share's previous book, Union, well enough (I thought a good dozen poems in it where excellent), but this one is at a new level of brilliance. The strikingly original title poem, Squandermania, is perhaps the best in the book, and I am proud to have published it in FULCRUM.