Reviews for How Things Are

The average rating for How Things Are based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-06-07 00:00:00 Danny Kay I think James Richardson may be entering the pantheon of my favorite poets. I absolutely loved Vectors, so I thought I would pick up another of his collections - and I am absolutely not disappointed in the least. In a way, this is the complete opposite of Vectors. While that collection was made up entirely of very short verse, this is a collection of much longer works (The first poem is 22 pages long). Typically, I am a bit put off by longer poetry - probably due to my (lack of an) attention span as much as any other reason. With this collection, though, I was hooked. The opening poem - "How Things Are: A Suite for Lucretians" had me from the opening lines and never let go. It is a fantastic meditation on language, permanence, seperate-ness, the self... all of the issues that I like to see tackled - and he does it with such a fresh, original voice. The rest of the collection is also strong, but that first poem just blew me away. It is easily worth the price of admission.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-31 00:00:00 Richard Conti Not much to say but "wow". The title piece, by itself, is amongst the major work of art that have been produced about the Nazi extermination, and yes, of course, "after Auschwitz/only poetry". And yes, of course, those dibbuks are still with us, nothing to be done about that. Khurbn has been republished as ce center part of Triptych, along with Poland/1931, originally published in 1974 and the more recent Burning Babe (2007). In retrospect, would it have been better to read Khurbn as part of that Triptych? My provisional response would be a negative, if only because the other half of the book contains amazing poems, from the "icons" to the "dreamwork" poems to the Oklahoma poems, great poetry by itself, and also a bridge drawn from Khurbn to contemporary america. Khurbn and other poems is a major work of poetry. Just read it, read it and read it again.