- Paperback: 96 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (April 6 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0375709916
- ISBN-13: 978-0375709913
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14.9 x 0.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 141 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,310,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This fifth collection's title mostly refers to the body itself as hazardous material; the book includes poems about tattoos, the ever-hazardous penis ("Men are known to appreciate/ What it stands for"), and death by cancer and AIDS-related illnesses. For New Yorkers like McClatchy (Ten Commandments; Twenty Questions), "hazmat" will immediately recall September 11; a three-sonnet set called "Jihad" reacts not so much to one terrorist incident but to the Middle East troubles generally, and to the word "jihad," thereby adding language to the list of what may be toxic: "The holy war/ Is waged against the self at first, to raze/ The ziggurat of sin we climb upon/ To view ourselves, and next against that glaze/ The enemies of faith will use to disguise/ Their words. Only then, and at the caliph's nod,/ Are believers called to drown in blood the people/ Of an earlier book. There is no god but God." A series of 20 short poems ("Motets") brings McClatchy's classicism into a more compressed, more narrative mode, taking up bodies, illness or sex: "shapes on the sheet,/ yours doubled over, mine clenched and released." The longest and last poem, "Ouija," is McClatchy's elegy for James Merrill, using the s‚ance form central to Merrill's own epic to memorialize Merrill's project, to consider the mystery of his oeuvre and to "imagine a wave goodbye." If the book's varying materials aren't quite volatile enough to merit the title, they are still very affecting.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In his fifth book of poetry (after The Ten Commandments), McClatchy continues to explore the connection between the spiritual and the corporeal, seeking "a desire as yet half-satisfied." Though he reveres the past and pays tribute to his mentor, James Merrill, the largesse of these poems is the command over craft and language. McClatchy realizes that form and content do matter; what is being said is inherent in how it is being said. For example, in the poem "Glanum," which employs the couplet, the tempo increases with the use of enjambments as if the reader were racing through the ruins. Throughout, McClatchy demonstrates a fine linguistic control. The restricted use of end-stopped lines subdues the tendency of the rhymes to call attention to the pattern, and the slant rhymes (scribes/ pride; legion/become) prevent the poem from becoming monotonous and predictable. Thematically, Hazmat possesses a sense of grief, which "sinks its sorrow deep within and through its own life." In the end, these poems come to represent our own lives, our own longings, our own "flag of surrender" to the spiritual. A brilliant testament to McClatchy's place among American poets; highly recommended.
Tim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, PA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Tim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, PA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED HAZARDOUS MATERIAL,
By A Customer
This review is from: Hazmat (Hardcover)
The jacket tells you that HAZMAT means "hazardous material" and is an abbreviation used on signs at the entrances to long tunnels and suspicious containers. Well, the poems in J.D. McClatchy's HAZMAT are highly hazardous! Do not fear going through that tunnel or opening that lid. Stunning eye-openers and maximum pleasurable reading from beginning to end. Long live, JD!
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews) 1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hazmat,
By Zack Potter "Zack Potter" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Hazmat (Paperback)
Hazmat was a wonderful collection of all sorts of poems. There were Tankas, and Haikus, and even some I didn't know such as Canzone, and Epigram. I thought that these forms were really intricate, and hard to do. I did enjoy the word use though. I thought that it was really cool the way he used words, and painted pictures. An example that sticks in my mind is; She blacks her hair, and powders her face, getting ready to fight the evil. I would recommend this awesome collection to anyone who enjoys grammar and is interested in different forms of poetry. All in all this was a wonderful book comprised of amazing work!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Gem from our Nation's Leading Poet,
By Christopher Schmitz "Flaming Intellectual" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Hazmat (Paperback)
I read a lot and a lot of different genres. There are times I walk into a bookstore or log onto Amazon.com and tell myself: "Pretend you are someone else. Get something outside you're normal realm of taste." Suddenly, I'm buying jazz or British chamber opera, a novel by Someset Maugham, a Britney Spears compilation, a Luchino Visconti film about the Nazis etc.
I've read or skimmed quite a few novels and books of poetry old and new. J. D. McClatchy, a middle-aged gay New Yorker of Celtic decent, is quite simply writing the best contemporary poetry out there. He's published heavily in the elite "Poetry" magazine and turned out several books of poetry and criticism. He's to poems what Michael Cunningham is to novels: simply the most gifted stylist I've encountered. His style in "Hazmat" has been compared to Baudelaire because his earthy, gritty, sensual, tribal, blue collar themes are presented in precise classical verse. San Francisco poet Tom Gunn and British poet Anthony Hecht and, for that matter, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe all presented decadent subject matter with with a sterling classical sheen. It's an interesting contrast. McClatchy writes about relevant subject matter like terrorism, like the men's movement, like aging in our youth culture, etc. He escapes the need to wallow in abstraction and mythology and his poems seem, as poems seldom do, torn from the headlines. 1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED HAZARDOUS MATERIAL,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Hazmat (Hardcover)
The jacket tells you that HAZMAT means "hazardous material" and is an abbreviation used on signs at the entrances to long tunnels and suspicious containers. Well, the poems in J.D. McClatchy's HAZMAT are highly hazardous! Do not fear going through that tunnel or opening that lid. Stunning eye-openers and maximum pleasurable reading from beginning to end. Long live, JD!
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