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Digest
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2015)
From Epicurus to Sam Cooke, the Daily News to Roots, Digest draws from the present and the past to form an intellectual, American identity. In poems that forge their own styles and strategies, we experience dialogues between the written word and other art forms. Within this dialogue we hear Ben Jonson, we meet police K-9s, and we find children negotiating a sense of the world through a father’s eyes and through their own.
From Epicurus to Sam Cooke, the Daily News to Roots, Digest draws from the present and the past to form an intellectual, American identity. In poems that forge their own styles and strategies, we experience dialogues between the written word and other art forms. Within this dialogue we hear Ben Jonson, we meet police K-9s, and we find children negotiating a sense of the world through a father’s eyes and through their own.
84 pages, ebook
First published October 7, 2014
28 people are currently reading
1144 people want to read
About the author
Gregory Pardlo
16 books64 followersGregory Pardlo’s first book, Totem, received the American Poetry Review/ Honickman Prize in 2007. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Tin House, as well as anthologies including Angles of Ascent, the Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, and two editions of Best American Poetry. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a fellowship for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. An associate editor of Callaloo, he is currently a teaching fellow in Undergraduate Writing at Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
August 16, 2017
My personal Pulitzer reading challenge continues with the 2015 winner for poetry, Digest by Gregory Pardlo. A gifted poet based out of Brooklyn and teaching undergraduate writing at Columbia University, Pardlo is a gem of a writer who should not be overlooked when discussing contemporary poetry. His work has been praised as including "images that glimmer" by current poet laureate Tracy K. Smith and is an ambitious cross-section of modern poetry and couplets, and is a treat to read for literary fiction aficionados.
Pardlo writes about what is familiar to him and as he hails from Brooklyn, his poems are a chock full of references to the people and neighborhoods that call the borough home. In his Preamble to the four part poem Marginalia, Pardlo describes a typical neighborhood in Prospect Park. One can hear "the human retinue converging on the uneven playing fields. The African drum and dance circle sways the pignut tree into a charismatic trance..." and imagery so vibrant that one feels as though he is instantly transported to Brooklyn on a summer afternoon. In the same Marginalia, Pardlo describes the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn as residents prepare for July 4th and strikes an intriguing between his own life, the daily grind of Brooklyn, and social commentary of the time. As this is a contemporary volume, I appreciated the references to tennis star Venus Williams as well as current Hollywood celebrities. Marginalia could easily be the centerpiece of this volume, yet the stellar poem comes near the beginning, with more literary joys to follow.
Other poems which I enjoyed in this collection included "For Which it Stands." Pardlo discusses what the American flag symbolizes for African Americans today and includes a history lesson as well as his own social commentary. He writes of a family trip to Central America where he decides to change the family's car for a rental near Atlanta so that Southerners would not see their "Yankee license plates." Pardlo references fictional character Apollo Creed boxing for his country and cites his forebears trailblazing in the south to pave the way for increased civil rights today. While Pardlo is still apprehensive of the south, he still lauds the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, stating that, "I approve its message, its pledge to birth a nation of belonging and to teach that nation of the fire shut up in our bones."
Another poem that touched me was "Wishing Well" take describes Central Park and other sites in Manhattan during autumn. With vivid imagery, Pardlo sums up his sentiments about life as a New Yorker and makes a reader wish that they could be present in the pages. In addition to his work describing life in New York, Pardlo appears to be a savvy traveler as well because he writes poems that are musings about Copenhagen, Atlantic City, and Central America. In each instance, readers encounter people who make up the fabric of the human existence, and all of the words seem so real as though one is there. Each poem is more masterful than the next, leaving me awed by the time I completed this collection.
Gregory Pardlo is a leading contemporary American poet. His first collection Totem won the American Poetry Review Prize. Digest is a chock full of rich imagery and a pure joy to read and makes one appreciate that writing poetry is as time consuming as writing a lengthy novel. Pardlo's work is worthy of its accolades and I eagerly anticipate when he produces another acclaimed collection of his work.
Pardlo writes about what is familiar to him and as he hails from Brooklyn, his poems are a chock full of references to the people and neighborhoods that call the borough home. In his Preamble to the four part poem Marginalia, Pardlo describes a typical neighborhood in Prospect Park. One can hear "the human retinue converging on the uneven playing fields. The African drum and dance circle sways the pignut tree into a charismatic trance..." and imagery so vibrant that one feels as though he is instantly transported to Brooklyn on a summer afternoon. In the same Marginalia, Pardlo describes the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn as residents prepare for July 4th and strikes an intriguing between his own life, the daily grind of Brooklyn, and social commentary of the time. As this is a contemporary volume, I appreciated the references to tennis star Venus Williams as well as current Hollywood celebrities. Marginalia could easily be the centerpiece of this volume, yet the stellar poem comes near the beginning, with more literary joys to follow.
Other poems which I enjoyed in this collection included "For Which it Stands." Pardlo discusses what the American flag symbolizes for African Americans today and includes a history lesson as well as his own social commentary. He writes of a family trip to Central America where he decides to change the family's car for a rental near Atlanta so that Southerners would not see their "Yankee license plates." Pardlo references fictional character Apollo Creed boxing for his country and cites his forebears trailblazing in the south to pave the way for increased civil rights today. While Pardlo is still apprehensive of the south, he still lauds the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, stating that, "I approve its message, its pledge to birth a nation of belonging and to teach that nation of the fire shut up in our bones."
Another poem that touched me was "Wishing Well" take describes Central Park and other sites in Manhattan during autumn. With vivid imagery, Pardlo sums up his sentiments about life as a New Yorker and makes a reader wish that they could be present in the pages. In addition to his work describing life in New York, Pardlo appears to be a savvy traveler as well because he writes poems that are musings about Copenhagen, Atlantic City, and Central America. In each instance, readers encounter people who make up the fabric of the human existence, and all of the words seem so real as though one is there. Each poem is more masterful than the next, leaving me awed by the time I completed this collection.
Gregory Pardlo is a leading contemporary American poet. His first collection Totem won the American Poetry Review Prize. Digest is a chock full of rich imagery and a pure joy to read and makes one appreciate that writing poetry is as time consuming as writing a lengthy novel. Pardlo's work is worthy of its accolades and I eagerly anticipate when he produces another acclaimed collection of his work.
June 25, 2016
Intellectually challenging, the volume gives no quarter to the reader not up to scratch on Western philosophy, African American history, and popular culture. The music of the poems very often carries me through seas of incomprehension. It is a wry, knowing, and, yes, tragic voice. The last because it understands the situation of loneliness. Despite family, communal, and intellectual ties, the speaker feels his loneliness in the marrow. He makes me feel again mine.
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October 10, 2015The thing that made me pick this book off the shelf was the blurb on the back that promised "engaged, intelligent poetry, with its exuberant range of cultural and historical references." Good, I thought. I like writing that is smart, and that makes me think.
In that, Pardlo delivers as advertised. There are references to Sojourner Truth, Frederick Law Olmstead, Gouverneur Morris (one of the Founding Fathers), Spinoza, Abraham from the Bible, Robert Johnson, Gaugin, Chinua Achebe, and that is only in the first ten pages. And all of this was in the description of a multicultural Brooklyn with picknickers, handball players, fireworks, door to door evangelists, and grocery shoppers.
Some of the poems only made sense after I Googled a few things. "Four Improvisations on Ursa Corregidora" takes off on the work of Gayl Jones, a novelist with whom I was unfamiliar.
"Alienation Effects" is written in the voice of philosopher Louis Althusser, who killed his wife. He explains himself, or fails to do so. In a surprise twist, he addresses the author: "I can't deliver you, Pardlo."
"The Conatus Improvisations" are a series of poems, each beginning with a quote from a philosopher, and each about cars. "Conatus" I looked up. It is the tendency of a thing to continue itself. In this case it seems to be saying that cars have taken on a life of their own, and made us serve them.
But it is not as simple as that. There is philosophy here, but this is not philosophy. It is poetry. There are vivid images, sometimes whimsical (the overheated car like a beached whale "pouring steam from its blowhole," legs of mechanics dangling from the upraised hoods of cars being worked on "like tailfins draping a pelican's beak," "knots of cars strung in rows like Incan quipu"). And there is precise language, ticking along in packed sentences, swinging from the erudite to the slangy.
Other poems I enjoyed were a fake college course outline, and a fake book blurb, which were almost laugh out loud funny, in their spoof of the overblown language of academe.
In that, Pardlo delivers as advertised. There are references to Sojourner Truth, Frederick Law Olmstead, Gouverneur Morris (one of the Founding Fathers), Spinoza, Abraham from the Bible, Robert Johnson, Gaugin, Chinua Achebe, and that is only in the first ten pages. And all of this was in the description of a multicultural Brooklyn with picknickers, handball players, fireworks, door to door evangelists, and grocery shoppers.
Some of the poems only made sense after I Googled a few things. "Four Improvisations on Ursa Corregidora" takes off on the work of Gayl Jones, a novelist with whom I was unfamiliar.
"Alienation Effects" is written in the voice of philosopher Louis Althusser, who killed his wife. He explains himself, or fails to do so. In a surprise twist, he addresses the author: "I can't deliver you, Pardlo."
"The Conatus Improvisations" are a series of poems, each beginning with a quote from a philosopher, and each about cars. "Conatus" I looked up. It is the tendency of a thing to continue itself. In this case it seems to be saying that cars have taken on a life of their own, and made us serve them.
But it is not as simple as that. There is philosophy here, but this is not philosophy. It is poetry. There are vivid images, sometimes whimsical (the overheated car like a beached whale "pouring steam from its blowhole," legs of mechanics dangling from the upraised hoods of cars being worked on "like tailfins draping a pelican's beak," "knots of cars strung in rows like Incan quipu"). And there is precise language, ticking along in packed sentences, swinging from the erudite to the slangy.
Other poems I enjoyed were a fake college course outline, and a fake book blurb, which were almost laugh out loud funny, in their spoof of the overblown language of academe.
June 1, 2018
My eyes practically bounced off the lines in this book of exceptionally dense poems. Everything the reviewers say is true, about thr way Parlo engages these large epistemological and historical arguments. But the result are poems that are dense, and for me, not musical or especially poetic. Rather, these read like logic puzzles or philosophical arguments waged via association. It's definitely part of a tradition, through Eliot and others. It just wasn't for me.
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February 24, 2020I cannot give this book a rating as it Pulitzer Prize, and because I just don't understand his poetry even though I read this book twice. Yet, I loved his first poem.
May 26, 2020
This Pulitzer-winning collection is made up of densely allusion-filled, highly intellectual poems concerning such topics as race, African American arts and culture, Western philosophy, the tortured jargon of academic texts, patriotism, cars and other technology, mental illness, the generation gap, and father-child relationships complicated by conflict and sometimes even violence. The dad stuff, in particular, struck me as the quietly bleeding emotional heart of the book, as Pardlo evokes a father given to such colorful sayings as "I made you.... / I can un-make you, and make another one / just like you," a father whose "fist only rose on occasion, / graceful, impassioned, as if imitating Arthur Ashe's balletic serve, / so that you almost forgot you were in its way." A father whose "kids were / rebel cities [he] loved like Sherman."
I also sympathized with the passages dealing with feeling like an outsider, even in a diverse city: "You are Caliban / and Crusoe, perpetual stranger with a fork / in the socket of life's livid grid...."
I smiled at the poet's crotchety disdain for social media: "I finally friended my brother. / It may be we will never / speak again. Why speak / when we have this crystal ball / through which / to judge one another's lives?" There is a not-insignificant amount of such (gentle, self-aware) smirking and grumping going on in this book, and it makes for particularly good poems when it is aimed just as much at the self as at others, as in the book's funniest poem, "Wishing Well," in which the speaker has a strange interaction with a young man with "heel-chewed hems," a man he at first negatively judges for his callow age and scuffed appearance but with whom he ultimately bonds in an unexpected way.
I admired the empathetic cross-gender imagination with which, in one poem, Pardlo sketches the character of an eccentric female relative -- "My aunt who doesn't mind / a bit of shell if it means getting all the crabmeat." I wouldn't have minded seeing a bit more of this.
Most of all, though, I relished all the gorgeous, fresh and on-point similes: "knots of cars / strung in rows like Incan quipu," "rows of gun blue lockers / lined like gutted fish expiring through louvered / gills," "water furry as the arm / of an arctic bear." In one poem, Pardlo uses the lovely phrase "The blue brigades of eternal hypnotics" as a stand-in for "the dead." This always thoughtful, sometimes extravagantly lush attention to language made the book for me.
I also sympathized with the passages dealing with feeling like an outsider, even in a diverse city: "You are Caliban / and Crusoe, perpetual stranger with a fork / in the socket of life's livid grid...."
I smiled at the poet's crotchety disdain for social media: "I finally friended my brother. / It may be we will never / speak again. Why speak / when we have this crystal ball / through which / to judge one another's lives?" There is a not-insignificant amount of such (gentle, self-aware) smirking and grumping going on in this book, and it makes for particularly good poems when it is aimed just as much at the self as at others, as in the book's funniest poem, "Wishing Well," in which the speaker has a strange interaction with a young man with "heel-chewed hems," a man he at first negatively judges for his callow age and scuffed appearance but with whom he ultimately bonds in an unexpected way.
I admired the empathetic cross-gender imagination with which, in one poem, Pardlo sketches the character of an eccentric female relative -- "My aunt who doesn't mind / a bit of shell if it means getting all the crabmeat." I wouldn't have minded seeing a bit more of this.
Most of all, though, I relished all the gorgeous, fresh and on-point similes: "knots of cars / strung in rows like Incan quipu," "rows of gun blue lockers / lined like gutted fish expiring through louvered / gills," "water furry as the arm / of an arctic bear." In one poem, Pardlo uses the lovely phrase "The blue brigades of eternal hypnotics" as a stand-in for "the dead." This always thoughtful, sometimes extravagantly lush attention to language made the book for me.
April 22, 2016
I'm stubbornly insisting that I will someday "get" poetry. It's my blind spot as a lover of literature. I can read a poem and it is as if I don't understand the language. Therefore, I tend to like writers of light verse, or poets like Billy Collins, who write in conversational style.
To keep trying, I picked up Gregory Pardlo's volume, Digest, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. It is somewhat reminiscent of Billy Collins, in that it has that droll conversational tone and also has mnay pop culture references. Some of the poems I didn't understand at all, but over all I liked it.
I knew I was going to like this when early on I came across this passage from "Problemata":
"I finally friended my brother.
It may be will never
speak again. Why speak
when we have this crystal ball
through which
to judge one another's lives?
I imagine this is what
the afterlife will be like.
I'm ghost, we say
instead of goodbye."
Also fantastic are "The Conatus Improvisations," which are mostly about cars and driving, though each poem has the name of a classical author, which I don't understand but I don't let it worry me. From "Heraclitus":
"Overheating cannot be blamed on a faulty idiot light.
The car in crisis, beached on the roadside and pouring
steam from its blowhole as you watch the rain melt
the windshield, the perfect screen for projecting a fantasy
dissolve that begins with your jalopy dropped from a barge
to be eaten by the reef like a dive site."
From Boethius:
"Used to be the battle of getting there was indeed a tortoise and
hare proposition full of K-turns in strangers' driveways."
Pardlo also has a long poem called "Alienation," in which the narrator has murdered his wife. It's a poem that is written in prose style, so I wonder if it really can be called a poem.
Other nuggets in the collection is "Raisin," about going to see a production of Raisin in the Sun starring Diddy, "Zoso," the name generally given Led Zeppelin IV, and a reference to a "Sherman Helmsley hairline," surely the only time that actor has ever been mentioned in a published poem. I also loved Pardlo's comparing quotation marks to "fingers flensing air like Thriller zombies."
As for what it all means, well, I'm just happy that I understood most of it. I'm afraid when it comes to poetry, that's a major step for me.
May 1, 2015
I thought two things when I heard about this book - damn, why has this been out for a year and I haven't caught wind of it yet - and two, well duh, of course this won the Pulitzer.
I saw Gregory read the first time about eight years ago at the Poetry Project. After his reading I started a poetry reading review site I was so impressed by the work. I've had the chance to see him read one other time since then, and I've considered him the finest reader of poetry I've encountered in my time. I've looked now and again, once or twice a year, for a new work from him to surface.
He has not disappointed with this collection, and I am quite happy to know I now will have far more company looking, now and again, for his future endeavors.
I saw Gregory read the first time about eight years ago at the Poetry Project. After his reading I started a poetry reading review site I was so impressed by the work. I've had the chance to see him read one other time since then, and I've considered him the finest reader of poetry I've encountered in my time. I've looked now and again, once or twice a year, for a new work from him to surface.
He has not disappointed with this collection, and I am quite happy to know I now will have far more company looking, now and again, for his future endeavors.
April 2, 2016
A powerful collection of diverse poems which is justly deserving of all the acclaim it has garnered. I especially enjoyed the series of poems that he links together by a common thread. One series of poems, for instance, begins with each one being kick started by a quote by a famous historical personage (St. Augustine, for instance). In fact, Mr. Pardlo's poems are effectively drenched with historical references. I love the way that Pardlo gives deeply of himself in each well constructed verse.
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July 11, 2019A collection of poems dense with references, allusions, name-dropping, from culture high, low and in-between. Sometimes I felt myself lost (what reader can match the poet’s breadth of knowledge?), but there was also much I appreciated. Yes, there are philosophers, but there are also plenty of ideas and images drawn from everyday life (if I friend my brother, will we stop talking?). I can see why this won a Pulitzer.
June 18, 2015
Well, it does read as a sort of poetic digest-- which is on the one hand exciting and far-reaching; on the other hand, I find myself clinging to the strongest voices in the book and wanting more of each. Thus is my pesky desire for story, for connection.
There are some stunners, for sure: "Occam" in "The Conatus Improvisations" & "Wishing Well" & "Raisin..." (I see a pattern in my preferences-- the poems of closer and therefore more tender moments). I have a feeling this book would expand for me with time, which it definitely asks of you in each successive line.
Some of Pardlo's smart and bone-deep imagery:
"...but at year's end my innocence dislodged/ like a powdered wig as I witnessed the first installment/ of Roots" (37, "Philadelphia Negro").
"That oppressive fruit dropped heavy as a medicine/ ball in my lap meant to check my ego..." (35, "Raisin")
"If every line is a horizon, what when/ I have two? One stratus, moody as the treble/ string on a lute" (62, "Bipolar")
There are some stunners, for sure: "Occam" in "The Conatus Improvisations" & "Wishing Well" & "Raisin..." (I see a pattern in my preferences-- the poems of closer and therefore more tender moments). I have a feeling this book would expand for me with time, which it definitely asks of you in each successive line.
Some of Pardlo's smart and bone-deep imagery:
"...but at year's end my innocence dislodged/ like a powdered wig as I witnessed the first installment/ of Roots" (37, "Philadelphia Negro").
"That oppressive fruit dropped heavy as a medicine/ ball in my lap meant to check my ego..." (35, "Raisin")
"If every line is a horizon, what when/ I have two? One stratus, moody as the treble/ string on a lute" (62, "Bipolar")
August 6, 2015
Pardlo's diversity of reference is actually a little dizzying for such a popular volume of poetry: yet the line this book walks between narrative and personal lyric keeps this volume grounded in an unexpected way. Pardlo's vision of Brooklyn and his own biography ground this book that slips in and out of complicated American identity. Like Claudia Rankine's Citizen, which is thematically more direct and angry but less autobiographical, this book interrogates Americanness, Otherness, and blackness in ways that can make one feel both comforted and uncomfortable at once. The insight in Digest is that it is allows for digesting of all those layer complications: interplays between history and pop culture, personal and persona, political and polis, etc, are allowed a space to brew in Pardlo's verse.
This is one of my favorite Pulitzer Prize winning books of poetry, and one that I was not entirely expecting.
This is one of my favorite Pulitzer Prize winning books of poetry, and one that I was not entirely expecting.
August 21, 2015
Gregory Pardlo offers a kaleidoscope of daddy issues in DIGEST. But there’s more. He has a beautiful, dare I say poetic, way with language that mixes high and low culture with ease and insight. But he isn’t abstract. His poems are rooted in place, whether that be Brooklyn, Atlantic City or outside the Met. But he’s also cerebral in the best way, in dialogue with his relations, his history and his intellectual ancestors. In that sense, Pardlo is part of a great lineage. Like those giants on whose shoulders he stands, his work deepens with repeated reads, and maybe even gives readers a lift to that rare view of compassion.
January 13, 2017
"You are stranded
at the limit, extremity and restriction,
jealous for that elusive—the domestic, yes,
you’re thinking: not the brick and mortar, but
the quickening backfill of belonging, the stranger-
facing, the neighbor-knowing confidence and ease
with the ripple that diminishes as it extends
over the vast potential of immovable thirst."
— Selection from "Marginalia"
at the limit, extremity and restriction,
jealous for that elusive—the domestic, yes,
you’re thinking: not the brick and mortar, but
the quickening backfill of belonging, the stranger-
facing, the neighbor-knowing confidence and ease
with the ripple that diminishes as it extends
over the vast potential of immovable thirst."
— Selection from "Marginalia"
November 7, 2017
Filled with wonderful allusions and incredible use of language. It also is a bit of the more difficult side of contemporary poetry in that much of it seems to make no sense, but it is quite a ride. And he is a great reader in public.
July 12, 2018
Really loved this collection. Was great to read this after reading a few really bad books.
My favorite poems were:
“Problema 3” on p. 13
“Alienation Effects” on pgs. 48-57
“Philadelphia, Negro” on pgs. 37-38
“Wishing Well” on p. 67-68
“For Which It Stands” on p. 63-64
My favorite poems were:
“Problema 3” on p. 13
“Alienation Effects” on pgs. 48-57
“Philadelphia, Negro” on pgs. 37-38
“Wishing Well” on p. 67-68
“For Which It Stands” on p. 63-64
May 27, 2015
Astonished and a perhaps a bit ashamed I did not love this. I found little to inhabit, moments though obviously authentic, slipped by as alien as ever.
January 13, 2016
I loved this book. Will definitely read it again.
October 21, 2015
Wow! I cannot wait to teach this one!
September 12, 2019
This won the Pulitzer?
Meh. The people on the prize committee must be really old. The book is full of references to twentieth-century pop culture; it felt really dated to me, even though it was published in 2014. But if the people on the committee got all the references, they probably thought it was clever.
There's a long poem in the voice of Louis Althusser, about his murder of his wife. I actually read Althusser's memoir, The Future Lasts Forever: A Memoir, and it is batshit crazy. He says, for instance, that the happiest time of his life were the five years he spent interred in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. Althusser also spent time in mental hospitals; one was extremely noisy, so he mashed bread up into tiny, hard balls and shoved them in his ears to drown out the noise, because, sure, any adult would think that's a great idea; we've all been there, right? Then the bread started to rot, which caused horrible ear infections. So he told the doctors that the rotting bread in his ears was giving him unbearable headaches without adequately explaining the logic that led him to put bread in his ears, and the doctors thought, "This is more insanity; the guy does not have rotting bread in his ears," but eventually he had to have surgery, because he was the sort of person who thought it was a good idea to put tiny hard balls of bread in his ears but couldn't convey that to anyone else, despite supposedly being an intellectual genius whose ideas about how the world works the rest of us should learn from.
The stuff about the murder of his wife, Helene Rytmann.... Althusser claimed that murdering her was an act of love, because hey, that's how men show women they love them, right? It's so revoltingly misogynist (as is the entire book), anti-semitic, and self-justifying. I can't describe it. Words fail.
But Pardlo tries. And the poem did not work for me at all. It sounded too much like what it is: a sane person trying and failing to think and talk like a crazy person. And the fact that it's the longest poem in the book is a problem for the whole book.
Don't get me wrong: I didn't hate this book. I appreciated many of the insights Pardlo offered me into race, and overall, even with the weaknesses, I thought it balanced out to three-ish stars. But I bought it before it won the Pulitzer (don't remember why I picked it up; it probably just looked interesting) and didn't know it won when I took it off my shelf and decided to read it. So when I went to write this review and discovered what a big deal others thought it was, well, I felt the need to explain why I consider it average at best.
Meh. The people on the prize committee must be really old. The book is full of references to twentieth-century pop culture; it felt really dated to me, even though it was published in 2014. But if the people on the committee got all the references, they probably thought it was clever.
There's a long poem in the voice of Louis Althusser, about his murder of his wife. I actually read Althusser's memoir, The Future Lasts Forever: A Memoir, and it is batshit crazy. He says, for instance, that the happiest time of his life were the five years he spent interred in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. Althusser also spent time in mental hospitals; one was extremely noisy, so he mashed bread up into tiny, hard balls and shoved them in his ears to drown out the noise, because, sure, any adult would think that's a great idea; we've all been there, right? Then the bread started to rot, which caused horrible ear infections. So he told the doctors that the rotting bread in his ears was giving him unbearable headaches without adequately explaining the logic that led him to put bread in his ears, and the doctors thought, "This is more insanity; the guy does not have rotting bread in his ears," but eventually he had to have surgery, because he was the sort of person who thought it was a good idea to put tiny hard balls of bread in his ears but couldn't convey that to anyone else, despite supposedly being an intellectual genius whose ideas about how the world works the rest of us should learn from.
The stuff about the murder of his wife, Helene Rytmann.... Althusser claimed that murdering her was an act of love, because hey, that's how men show women they love them, right? It's so revoltingly misogynist (as is the entire book), anti-semitic, and self-justifying. I can't describe it. Words fail.
But Pardlo tries. And the poem did not work for me at all. It sounded too much like what it is: a sane person trying and failing to think and talk like a crazy person. And the fact that it's the longest poem in the book is a problem for the whole book.
Don't get me wrong: I didn't hate this book. I appreciated many of the insights Pardlo offered me into race, and overall, even with the weaknesses, I thought it balanced out to three-ish stars. But I bought it before it won the Pulitzer (don't remember why I picked it up; it probably just looked interesting) and didn't know it won when I took it off my shelf and decided to read it. So when I went to write this review and discovered what a big deal others thought it was, well, I felt the need to explain why I consider it average at best.
February 9, 2023
This is what I'm talking about when I talk about poetry needing to be a bit transcendent. Pardlo is using poetry to comment on the human experience in interesting ways. Does he sometimes go to the dark side where big words are there just there to make it all sound sophisticated?... yes, but I'd rather he reach for the stars and fail than not reach at all. (not that he fails, mind you - I'm just speaking from the perspective of someone that prefers more straight forward wording). Poetry is about language, after all. One of the longest poems in the collection (called Alienation Effects) is the perfect example of this. In the beginning, I had no idea what was going on or what he was saying and I was struggling with his verses, but by the end, I thought it was a beautiful poem about struggling with the wrongs you've committed in your life. The poetry often feels ostentatious, but the meaning does shine through and so the pretentious nature of the text becomes something else... a disguise, a calling. There is an earnestness here that cannot be denied and is unaffected by the turn of phrase.
My favorite poems are For Which It Stands - a poem about how patriotism is not a solution to the problems in America, and Wishing Well in which the poet shows a vulnerable side that I found absolutely endearing.
My favorite poems are For Which It Stands - a poem about how patriotism is not a solution to the problems in America, and Wishing Well in which the poet shows a vulnerable side that I found absolutely endearing.
May 5, 2017
It's perfectly possible that I don't understand something fundamental about poetry, or that I am viewing it too narrowly, but I have read some poetry lately with very many words that required me to have the dictionary on hand to know their meanings and pronunciations. I say this with some frustration because I studied literature in school, and I wonder if I cannot understand this language, who can? PhDs? I don't know. I'm frustrated with writing that renders itself inaccessible to readers with complications. Maybe that's a specific taste thing, but I think writing should be legible by everyone.
This all being said, Pardlo clearly has a great handle on language. This language is deliberate, and the rhythms in the book are interesting and jarring.
Listen, this book has smart poems, but their inaccessibility made them not worth their while, as far as I was concerned.
This all being said, Pardlo clearly has a great handle on language. This language is deliberate, and the rhythms in the book are interesting and jarring.
Listen, this book has smart poems, but their inaccessibility made them not worth their while, as far as I was concerned.
April 12, 2020
I wavered between 3 and 4 stars. I've leaned towards 4, a soft 4 you might say, because while some of the poems can come across as over-scholastic in an unengaging way ("Written By Himeself" & "Corrective Lenses: Creative Reading and (Recon)textual/ization" the most explicit culprits), the way Pardlo manages metaphor is comb-tooth precise and its semi-ironic depiction of a "how-to for upwardly mobile black parents beset with the guilt of assimilation" is a clever complex - in all its meanings: suppressed psychology, hidden facility, and multivalent interpretation. It's not for no reason that "Alienation Effects" is the central poem. It's integral to understanding the sentiments of the whole, and literally the centerpiece of the collection. I can't say I loved everything, for whatever that's worth, but I respect it a lot.
October 1, 2019
If you want to read poetry for the immediate pleasure it brings you, don’t turn to these poems. Pardlo makes his reader work—and I mean dig out the dictionary, do the Google search, get lost in Wikipedia articles work—to figure out what he’s referencing and what’s going on. To me, it feels overly-pretentious and so self-consciously erudite, which is exactly why poetry has a bad rep in the first place. This is a poetry collection to read just so you can name drop the title at cocktail parties. I do, however, appreciate a lot of what he does with language, with imagery, with play—impressive stuff.
August 20, 2024
I read Pardlo’s introduction to God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson. While he praised the book he was honest about how its style had understandably gone out of fashion. I was impressed to read an introduction that pointed out flaws so I looked him up. Turns out he won the Pulitzer prize for poetry with this collection so I read it.
On the one hand, the poems are all very sharp and somewhat esoteric yet the writing is also unusual and arresting. Sometimes a poem hits perfectly on something like ‘Corrective Lenses’ or ‘All God’s Children.’ Mostly though I don’t feel drawn to his poetry yet I would definitely read his memoir or a book of his essays.
On the one hand, the poems are all very sharp and somewhat esoteric yet the writing is also unusual and arresting. Sometimes a poem hits perfectly on something like ‘Corrective Lenses’ or ‘All God’s Children.’ Mostly though I don’t feel drawn to his poetry yet I would definitely read his memoir or a book of his essays.
December 7, 2017
If you’re looking for poetry you can read through on the first try and “get it”, then this is not a book for you. If you don’t want to spend time with your poems, staring into each other’s eyes and discovering new features and shades over the course of days and days, then this not a book for you. Pardlo’s poems are dense, complex, and full of meaning that one must sit with for extended periods of time to mine. It is well worth the effort, and I know I will keep coming back to this book over and over again.
April 11, 2018
I took my time reading this. I believe one reads poetry differently than literary fiction or prose. Pardlo’s sense of history is strong and I found those poems in which he evokes history the most powerful. I admit this as my bias as a historian. The book exhibits Pardlo’s range as a poet writing comfortably with allusions to African-American history and culture as well as drawing from Hegel and Kierkegaard. One other aspect I appreciate about some of these poems are references to Pardlo’s personal history. It engenders empathy toward the poet himself. I’ll be revisiting some of these poems.
February 27, 2018
4.5 STARS
This collection reminds me why I need to read poetry on a regular basis. Poetry means being surgical with words and generous with interpretation. Pardlo writes so well. There are a lot of references to classical works that, had I been more familiar with these, might have enriched my reading further, but I didn't feel like I couldn't enjoy this poetry without that knowledge. I look forward to reading more of Pardlo's works.
This collection reminds me why I need to read poetry on a regular basis. Poetry means being surgical with words and generous with interpretation. Pardlo writes so well. There are a lot of references to classical works that, had I been more familiar with these, might have enriched my reading further, but I didn't feel like I couldn't enjoy this poetry without that knowledge. I look forward to reading more of Pardlo's works.
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June 13, 2021I decided to check this collection out after hearing the poem “Wishing Well” on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and I’m glad I did.
I didn’t relate to most of them, but they were still generative in that I started three new poems while reading it.
Also, if you enjoy the poem “For Which It Stands” I suggest you check out the song “Folk-Metaphysics” by milo (Rory Ferreira).
I didn’t relate to most of them, but they were still generative in that I started three new poems while reading it.
Also, if you enjoy the poem “For Which It Stands” I suggest you check out the song “Folk-Metaphysics” by milo (Rory Ferreira).
February 26, 2019
A fantastic collection of poems. Pardlo's ability to pull together themes and ideas from seemingly every aspect of time and culture is remarkable. And despite the density of his references, his work is accessible and relatable.
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