Selfwolf (Phoenix Poets) Book

Too cute by half and often cloyingly didactic - every poem has a wind-up and a 'punchline', a rhythm which by the third poem feels more like a rhythm of assembly-line work than a rhythm of thought. Read this because I read a snippet of his book Stevens and the Interpersonal, a hatchet-job on Ashbery's solipsism and lack of political imagination (likely a fair criticism, all things considered), and wanted to see what Halliday's idea of an Other-respecting poetry would be. He aims at something like the suppleness of O'Hara's human-scale poems and for the most part lands instead in the gauzy realm of touchy-feely Hallmark Human Interest, unhappily tinged with Horny Divorcee. This is a meaner review than is entirely necessary, but I felt battered by the end of this thing, and it's only seventy-seven pages.

The best poems here are "Timberwolf", "Ballad of Little Millard", "Non-Tenured", "Divorce Dream", "Taipei Tangle", and "Pages".