Reviews for Florida Poems

The average rating for Florida Poems based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-07 00:00:00 Liam Michaels I'm not big on poetry -- Seamus Heaney and "The Spoon River Anthology" and Poe's "The Raven" are about all I like. But I'm glad to add this book to my shelf. McGrath (winner of one of the MacArthur "genius" grants) has penned a collection here that ranges from fanciful to furious, with several stops for laugh lines. For instance, at one point he describes Chuck E. Cheese as "the bewhiskered Mephistopheles of ring toss,/the diabolical vampire of our transcendent ideals." He also says Orlando has "the character of a turnpike restroom." I particularly liked "The Orange," "William Bartram Beset by Crocodiles or Alligators," "Hemingway Dines on Boiled Shrimp and Beer," and the longest entry in this collection, "The Florida Poem," in which he ranges from prehistory to modern times to paint a portrait of his home state. It's a rambling piece that touches on "technocrats and mousketeer apparatchiks" and rambles "past Spanish moss and dangling chads, Apollo in flames and Arthur Godfrey's ukelele." It's quite a ride. I would have given him five stars except he contends nothing of earth-shaking import happened in Florida between Juan Ponce de Leon's discovery and the modern day, and that's simply not true.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-08-31 00:00:00 Peter Raleigh Bought this on vacation in Key West knowing nothing about it or the author's work (I liked the cover), only thinking it would be an apropos souvenir. (Some people buy t-shirts from the places they visit. I buy books.) It turned out to be just okay. McGrath tends to favor longer poems in this collection, it seems. Perhaps that's his style and I'm just unawares. That's all right. There were some I liked, some I didn't quite get, and some great lines. Also a lot of big vocabulary words.