Reviews for Amplitude: New and Selected Poems

The average rating for Amplitude: New and Selected Poems based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-22 00:00:00 Misty Loveless So this kind of poetry really isn't for me. It's hard to unassociate with Carver. Sad things and unspoken violence with words and themes repeating themselves in a forest by the river. There's an emptiness to all of it, which I found unpleasant. Really enjoyed her later work, it felt less isolated.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-09-07 00:00:00 Stephen M. Fromhold This is my second reading of Amplitude, and it cemented my impression that Tess Gallagher is one of the best American poets in a long time. The ghost of Raymond Carver lingers in many of the poems, but it strikes me as authentic. It would be artificial for her to try to edit him out of all the experiences and sensibilities that drive her poems. Gallagher has a keen ear, a wonderful sense of narrative, and a deep appreciation for people and their interaction with their environment. I particularly like the way she works her line breaks and punctuation, as in "Zero": stupid tranquility, to be most sure/ in the abstract, the zebra/ raising its head from the river, the clock/ wound to the usual multitude, the junco bird/ appearing as a miracle on the blind magician's/ balcony. A thing among things,/ the magician is there as an absolute, his/ long sleeves, an attitude of sight/ that amounts to seeing, the morning steady/