Reviews for Face: A Novella in Verse

The average rating for Face: A Novella in Verse based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-01-16 00:00:00 Heidi Piette Many of David's individual poems resonate with me, but this whole collection blew me away. The images continually rise up in my own work, as I move between reality and the facade of reality.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-02-15 00:00:00 Lincoln Hannah I'm not sure what The Face is, but I wouldn't consider it a novella in verse. Is there a story here? Maybe the suggestion of one. Basically, the speaker is going on about "the cinematography of the soul" (24) and how some Hollywood producer is making a movie about his unimportant life. Throughout the book there are motifs of identity, the self, faces and masks, and references to actors and directors. We follow the speaker across Italy and the deserts of California, where not much happens except for some memories involving ex-lovers and the birth of his daughter. The idea itself is interesting'the absurdity of an average life being hyped into a Hollywood premiere is strange enough in itself, but then being forced to become an outside observer of your most intimate and banal moments...! Unfortunately, the writing itself is not very compelling. Calling this "verse" is being extremely generous. There is no meter, no rhyme, and, with the exception of some unexpected diction, there's barely any poetic devices. The book consists of forty five mediocre prose poems. Ultimately, I found the exploration of the self to be pretty shallow. The worst offender is poem XVI, which repeats "Who am I? (Who was I; who will I be?)''" three times in nine lines (21). Am I supposed to think this is deep? Or poem XXVIII which lists types of masks for two and a half pages: "The mask reflecting/Fear. the desire for the ancient masks. The masks of Death, of Laughter./The masks of Fertility, of Fortune. The masks of Gods, & the Gods' own masks/Handed down to the lucky or the damned. Masked./My mask when I say, Listen to me. My mask, when I say, 'mask.' My mask/" Also, the dreaded "bougainvillea" appears on page 9, which is my own personal litmus test for a bad poet. Don't ask me why, but it's only been wrong once. Poems that I liked: "III," "IX." =2/45 (4.44%) poems that I liked.