From Publishers Weekly
The poems in this debut collection evoke the artistry of Edward Hopper as fiction writer Baxter ( Through the Safety Net) plays with images of light, hopelessness and the loss of American innocence and creativity. The poet fashions a vista of shopping malls, factories and highways in order to rail--often heavy-handedly--against complacency and naivete: "Say that it's hollow and they'll just laugh / . . . which is why if you tilt American heads backwards / American eyes, like dolls' eyes, snap shut suddenly." The way out of this "sleep," Baxter convincingly argues, is via the imagination--the "current" that will "pass through deadened arms, / until all the stories will be original again." In poems that celebrate art, music and literature, "life is proved / to be, not a still life, but otherwise." Despite some awkward imagery ("his favorite word flung in your face / like a blood clot"), and a sometimes blatant didacticism meant to implicate the reader, this volume is redeemed by its inventiveness and originality of form, content and spirit.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
