Radio, Radio

Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets

by Ben Doyle

Radio, Radio, Ben Doyle's first collection, is a book about gaps: between the transmitter and the desired, unimaginable receiver; between the prehistoric insect world and our fast-food, hot-wired culture; between words and what they just might mean. They meet us in the interstices between the moment just gone and the next one, with little agenda but to thrill, refresh, discomfit, and warn. Doyle's poems leap freely from sestina to sonnet to fragment to prose, searching for what they do not know. These are lyrics of serious intelligence -- they think carefully and deliberately but use often startling images and varied, original musics to deepen, widen, and rudder this thinking: "In the middle of every field, / obscured from the side by grass / or cornhusks, is a clearing where / she works burying swans alive / into the black earth" ("Radio, Radio").

Alternately playful, grim, realistic, surreal, tempered, associative, wise, and astonished, Radio, Radio finds an original niche in the poetry of the day, one that uses the veneer of contemporary poetics to reflect the human mind and soul that lie beneath.

Genres: Poetry

71 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Arnie Kahn]

Maybe experimental poetry is not for me. I read the positive reviews and reread and reread the poems, but they still made no sense to me. I tried and either I failed or Mr. Doyle (now Diller) failed.

[Melzanie]

when first reading this book, i was completely blown away. you know, in that good way when/where you just cannot figure out how the author did it! the bends, curves, pythagorean theorems of language are nothing short of astonishing. i'm amazed dude hasn't gotten way farther. serio. going back, i do have to concede to the datedness of the language/references, sure, but...talk about a book that will keep you thinking, keep you interested.

[Andrew Brogdon]

This is one of my favorite books, and I've gone through it many times. It's a difficult read in places, simply because Doyle is pushing the language so far in order to achieve the voice he wants. Check the AAP's page for "Satellite Convulsions" (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...) to see exactly what I mean.

[Lora]

I’m inspired by his use of language, and was laughing at times. I like how often he describes a thing as itself. I did not know what was going on most of the time. The poems felt like wearing a wet sweater of bog weeds, or walking through a weird dream of a surgical room.

[Aquila]

Clever use of language but very little actually resonated with me.

[Yelizaveta Price]

A beautiful collection of experimental poetry. One of the best I have read this year — its use of evocative imagery is breathtaking at times.

[Jules]

Astounding. I read Doyle with wonder and delight, and keep returning to these poems. More, please.

[Kelly]

I think Ben Doyle is one of the best emerging poets to date. He has a sense of beauty in his words I haven't felt since e.e.cummings, and a new way of producing his images.

[Luis Correa]

An almost manic use of language and form to explore modern life in the shadow of technology. Overwhelming and convoluted at times, but exciting anyway.

[Jessica]

This book is so smart, but not smarmy which so many smart books can be. Or maybe smarmy isn't what I mean...self-satisfied is maybe what I mean this book isn't.

[Mills College Library]

811.6 D6654r 2001

[E. T. Brother]

Not all that much, most of the poems didn't even make sense, and the beat seemed to be off.