Comments on: The Violence of the Morning

By: yakich

yakich — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:47:00 +0000

ray, nice solid review. oyster spit. yes. i’d buy that we’re lovers’ spit, like that one band i can’t recall says, buy unless the poem creates a world in which oyster spit makes in the world of the poem, oyster spit could just as easily be sea anemone piss or cloud juice.
danke.

By: David Dodd Lee

David Dodd Lee — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 14:48:00 +0000

I LOVE the passion in this review, the fact of it
declaring the poems themselves as a kind of effluvia, very much
ground matter, but boiled, certainly, by Bedient’s emotion.
It seems appropriate to be riled by such work–
no, necessary. And it doesn’t feel gratuitous in the least . . .

By: paisley

paisley — Thu, 13 Mar 2003 20:59:00 +0000

I’m so so glad someone else read this book with the same fury I did–fury at the ecstatic inconsistencies, the half-images, the dwindling intelligences. Good review.

By: Jonathan Mayhew

Jonathan Mayhew — Tue, 18 Feb 2003 21:31:00 +0000

I don’t really understand the reviewer’s objections to this book of poetry. There are many aspects of it that the reviewer speaks of in laudatory terms, which would suggest that the book is not as bad as all that. Yet the reviewer’s tone is extremely harsh. To call a book of poetry a crime when it is basically just uneven in quality is not justified. What motivates such a strong reaction?

By: human resources dept

human resources dept — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 07:48:00 +0000

Perhaps it should be reflected upon exactly whose sense of humour is more developed, Ray's or Cal's? Writing a ninety plus page book of poems that will neither cement an academic alliance nor speak plainly to the people, seems to me, in our crass and cowardly circumstances of now, the more absurd and uproarious choice.

I enjoy your essays Ray, just had to get that out.

By: noah eli gordon

noah eli gordon — Thu, 30 Jan 2003 17:23:00 +0000

a proverbial taste of one’s own medicine, no? I do like the blunt subjective honesty here ( as well as in some of Cal’s reviews) & wish more folks would practice it.

By: alice b fogel

alice b fogel — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 22:35:00 +0000

i really enjoyed this one too! most entertaining and spirited. many good laughs at truths, the best kind of laugh. you misspelled judgment and acknowledgment, though. thanks for signing me on to this site (though i don’t know how you did so).