Jeff Sirkin on Sandy Florian

Here's Jeff Sirkin's very thoughtful review of Sandy Florian's first book, Telescope in Latino Poetry Review: "A playful, fascinating and revealing machine, Sandy Florian's Telescope is a magic glass, and its refracted product is poetry."

This book and this review might make an interesting complication of Steve Burt's article "The Next Thing," an article I think was actually quite good at identifying a certain tendency in American poetry, though as John Latta points out, "The upshot, the payoff pitch, unarticulated by Burt, is: the New Thing is that old thing—sincerity and authenticity, “craft” and honor and seriousness."

Without going too deep into that article for now, I would add to this that it's perhaps the new version of the old thing, what Mark W so well defined on his blog recently (see my post below). The real boy, the real thing. I'll take Poe and Lovecraft please.

Something that is so amazing about Sandy's books (and this is also why Threadwell gives Burt some troubles in his article) is the way the things become extravagant and performative.

(PS there are several very good reviews in this Latino Poetry Review. Check for example out Notre Dame PhD candidate Todd Thorpe review of Robert Tejada.)