Changeable Thunder: Poems

Rating:
Summary: Another beautiful book of poems by David Baker
Review: Here is the master of the love poem at it again. There are so many tender poems, erotic poems, poems of devotion...and these are mingled with grave and ambitious longer poems that mix history and contemporary sorrows. There's a great poem here on Walt Whitman's unknown novel about the perils of drinking, another that features a wild and slothful Percy Shelley...all are full of imaginative sympathy, and they're beautiful too. I'm so happy to add this book to my collection.

Rating:
Summary: A Haunting, Powerful Collection
Review: This book is terrific: elegant yet plain-spoken, learned yet deeply human. Many of these poems sound like a straight-shot out of Whitman, but then they are counterbalanced with tender, quiet lyrics with the tone and delicacy of James Wright. As Wright himself put it, this is the poetry of a grown man. In a time of so much ironic, self-conscious writing, this is that rare thing: a book of sincere, heart-breaking beauty.