Surviving the Moment of Impact

Rating:
Summary: Stinging in this Portrayl of Bliss
Review: It isn't everyday someone publishes a young poet who also happens to be a good poet. But Soft Skull has successfully come through with Rachel's first book, _Surviving the Moment of Impact_. The book takes you on a tour of Rachel's childhood without falling prey to the whimsical, the boring, or all that has been said before in all of those same boring phrases and stanzas. Finally the reader can open their arms to welcome the midwest we've so often heard about and truly grow to understand it and love it.

Rachel tends to post-modernism with a yard stick, marking a step beyond it with his use, or I should say non-use, of punctuation. Imagine being carried through a poem without one mark to tell you to stop or start but yet you hold perfect meter and cadence throughout. It's downright remarkable. Sure, the likes of Frank O'Hara and others made a stamp of offing punctuation, but Rachel is the first to walk you through a poem at his own pace and with such incredible images and sounds. Rachel does sometimes use punctuation, but what he really depends on, more than anything, is a love and understanding that admire as beauty in all he sees.

This poet, for obviously being so well read and well taught (a student of the recent National Book Award winner Albert Goldbarth's at Wichita State), never makes the reader feel unintelligent. When he talks of being poor, the reader neither leans to being rich or poor, we are just there, wherever Rachel would like us to be. When he is holding a journal with pink and purple writing within and a lock we could break open so easily with even a thought, I was in the backseat of that car whistling along with the radio, too.

As tempting as it is to crawl into Rachel's life, and I expect as equally easy, we walk beside the poet, perhaps perched on his shoulder eyeing the midwest as one a great horizon we'd like to one day leave too. But leave for where? He still admires his home and doesn't bestow any ill rememberances to us, just the belief that there is more fairness over the horizon and I hope he has found that now.

This book deserves incredible praise. It's reviewers, Breat Easton Ellis, Henry Flesh, Scott Heim, and Edmund White, all eloquently propel the utmost respect and thanks to Rachel for his delicious book of poems. This young poet is one poet I will keep reading for every book to come. No matter where he wanders, I don't mind going along.

Rating:
Summary: Going thru the moment the impact
Review: Sadly, I'm not the type of person who's into poetry but this is one of the few books that I'll definitely make an exception for.

From the moment I read the first couple of lines in this book, I knew that I had something special in my hands.
I loved particularly "The Wait", "Surviving the moment of impact", "My father, one of those things i never write about", "telling", "suspension of disbelief", "this poem is haunted", "retained", "the project of the poem" and my personal favorite "six degrees of the devil".

I'm glad I took the time to check this one out. You should too.

Rating:
Summary: A Major Impact
Review: This is one of the most amazing collections of poetry I have read in a long time. His poetry can be enjoyed by anyone, of any age. As you read it rips through your heart and you can feel every word that's written. There are many popular poets who get credit for writing artsy words that are so abstract, they make no sense at all, but T. Cole Rachel's poems stand out because they actually mean something. I read "Surviving the Moment of Impact" on the bus on the way to school and I just started crying because I knew exactly what he meant. There was another poem- I can't remember the name- that was about Valentine's Day when he was young, and it was just so heart-wrenching. Ah, everyone should read this. It's just beautiful.