Facts for Visitors : Poems (New California Poetry)

Rating:
Summary: Innovation and the Individual Talent
Review: Reddy's debut collection is a necessary Baedeker for 21st-century poetics and its new salon of key writers, from Chicago to Paris, who are finding ways to weave together elements of traditional and linguistically innovative poetry. The poems turn on a dime - one minute sharp and snappy, the next languid and exotic.
We are led by Reddy's words into worlds enough, and time, that, from Esperanto to weird scenes onboard a boat sailing to a pseudo-darkness, query what it means to travel, or inhabit. The foreign trades places with the familiar, and a witty exploration uncovers lost cities of eloquence.
Reddy is, to my mind, one of the most exhilirating younger American poets now writing - and his spare yet delightful use of line is only one of his many gifts. Another is his unexpected way with theme; yet another, his propulsion of dead language and texts back to life. This much is fact: this book should not be forgotten on the voyage.