Playlist for the Apocalypse by Rita Dove

[Jen]

I have a great deal of respect for Rita Dove as a poet. She has a keen sense of the march of time. Her poetics don't generally excite me but her understanding of people caught in their moment in time, and somehow reminding us of our own moment in time, keeps her poetry interesting for me from poem to poem. I'm always wondering what or who her mind is going to process next and how she's going to present it to us. This would be a good book for a book club because of the various issues it touches on.

What I hadn't realized when I bought this book is that it's essentially a selected version of her work (a collected edition of her poetry had come out before this). It includes a pretty thorough notes section in which her battle with MS is talked about (a battle I wasn't aware of). Overall I preferred the earlier work in this book but there's lots to like here. The only part that fell flat for me was her poetry involving her medical trials, which was a bit disappointing to me because I've had my own. But I applaud her for giving that struggle space in her poetry because it's as important a struggle as any other people go through.