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Rating: 
Summary: I don't know:
Review: All I can do is laugh at this poet's ability to turn every image into a cause for self-celebration. This is the work of an MFA program. Look at me; look at me!
Rating:
Summary: I don't know:
Review: All I can do is laugh at this poet's ability to turn every image into a cause for self-celebration. This is the work of an MFA program. Look at me; look at me!
Rating: 
Summary: Well worth reading--from a lone non-relative in the west
Review: I am an avid reader of poetry, and Matthea Harvey's book is one of the best I've encountered in the past five years or so (at least). Her innovative work with form and syntax allows for both remarkable fluidity and sharp complexity. I have been getting to know her poems--at times reading them straight through for the sheer pleasure of the rhythmic and dramatic build, and at times focusing in on the rich,interconnecting layers. Her poems manage to do many things at once--and successfully. They are both fierce and delicate, playful and serious, emotional and intellectual, light-hearted and searingly intense--and I imagine this may cause jealous sparks from those who are incapable of navigating the territory of sharp and playful contradiction. But it seems to me that the two dissenting reviewers of this collection have more of a personal stake in the matter than the positive reviewers whose opinions they attack. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Harvey, and I am not in the habit of writing internet reviews. But the dissenting voices smacked far too much of professional envy, rather than rigorous thought, and I loved this collection far too much to let their words stand uncontested.
Rating:
Summary: It's a Debut; Give Her a Break Readers...
Review: I have not been batting well in terms of my poetry reading... The book has a good enough premise formally, but it seems to go on for a long time, too long. I could imagine these emjambed lines making up a long series at most, but as a book they feel forced. I'm not even sure the form is all that original. It feels familiar too. But I can't recommend the book anyway, so it doesn't much matter.
Rating: 
Summary: Now This One Just the Same...
Review: Matthea Harvey is a googlepoet, she's plexes beyond your solar plexuses. Joe Sallivan and Pete Dumpsey, silence, you nitwits! You are heartbreaking wrecks of staggering meanness. Please stop reviewing books! Please stop reading!!!
Rating:
Summary: A Hug for Us
Review: She makes the line hug itself.What more do you want?
Rating:
Summary: Iowa Poetry Reprise
Review: The Iowa Writers Workshop is often attacked for producing a brand of poetry that is...well, a "brand." Something so formulaic that it's noticeable from far and away as what has become known as the "Iowa style." In the case of Harvey's debut collection, this is much the case. However comendable a first book may be, this one from Harvey seems to speak to that odd new phenomenon of publishing before one's ready. Too many of these poems repeat themselves, and I don't mean formally (which is of course their purpose). They repeat themselves imagistically, tonally, in terms of subject matter, and emotion. There are about six full discrete separate poems in this collection; the rest are an attempt--or seem so--at filling a book. Harvey seems to have some talent, but her attention I think should focus on originality and on finding a truly deeply felt emotive subject. This book does not cut it.
Rating:
Summary: Almost a Good Summer Read
Review: This isn't exactly what I was hoping for when I started reading. The book looks a lot more experimental than it is in reality, many forms employed in it seeming to come from other books, famous contemporary writers like Jorie Graham or WS Merwin or Michael Palmer. I guess in some way copying the forms of experimental writers is experimental, but it's also not very original and wears on the experienced reader. You can tell though that this is a writer who knows what she's doing.
Rating:
Summary: a playful yet moving debut
Review: When I first sat down to read this book, I was taken by the whimsicality and humor of the poems. There is nothing "usual" here -- rather, one is given a discontented queen in a bathtub, a boy floating above an Italian festival, a lion-hunter writing letters to his love. Harvey's use of language and imagery in these poems is both surprising and delightful. Yet, despite Harvey's playfulness, there's something serious at the heart of this book. Many of these poems deal with loneliness and the isolation inherent in being human. There's a way in which the people in these poems reach out again and again to the reader, asking not for pity, but to be understood. Harvey's talent lies not just in the vivid images she evokes on the page, but also in the strength of the emotions she conveys in her silences. I found this a truly remarkable collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Why so much bile?
Review: Why are the customer reviews here so arch and mean? "Pity the Bathtub" is hardly an obscure book. It is about to go into its third printing, and this I heard from the director of the Press that published it. On top of that, Harvey's book, along with a few other first books, have made the big NY Houses suddenly pay a little more attention to poets early in their careers due to the sales of these books. All that aside, this is a fine debut. And if use of language is the key to predicting a poet's career, Matthea Harvey will have a long and August one ahead of her.
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