Don Quixote in America - Softcover

Aesop's Master
All The Great Shibboleths Are Dead
The Anesthesiologist
Appointment At The Louvre
Aquacade
As A Bee Leaves The Flower
At The Plinth
Autumn
Blind Date
Burial Of The Combs (a Pantoum)
Doctor Proust
Don Quixote In America
The Donny And Marie Lunchbox
Eleven From A Bestiary: 1. The Owl
Eleven From A Bestiary: 10. The Turtle
Eleven From A Bestiary: 11. The Lion
Eleven From A Bestiary: 2. The Dromedary
Eleven From A Bestiary: 3. The Ewe
Eleven From A Bestiary: 4. Cat
Eleven From A Bestiary: 5. Pigeons
Eleven From A Bestiary: 6. The Zebra
Eleven From A Bestiary: 7. Sirens
Eleven From A Bestiary: 8. The Crocodile
Eleven From A Bestiary: 9. The Monkey
Epithalamium
Failure Masked As A Show, An Ostent
Gogol's Soul
The Helmsman Invites The Waves To Speak
Hero Afraid Of Water
How Often He Thought
Hymn To Restlessness
In Memoriam To The One Addressed As You
Intermittence: A Love Poem
Letter Poem To John Ashbery
An Old Puzzle
On Her Reticence
Pictures Of An Inhibition
Poem In Envy Of Picasso's Acrobats
Portrait Of Orpheus As A Young Horticulturist
Press To Return
Reading Hesiod
The Recruit
Redolence: An Eclogue
Return Of The Absent Friend (society Is A Wave)
Revenge Of The Nereids
Romantic Notion
The Roses Of Nice
Scriabin Approaches
Sonnet
Swimming Lessons
Thanks For The Threnody
This World
Uncle's Pipes
Unidentifiable In Rain
Vehemence & Opinions
Voyage
The Water Lily Is Doomed
Wilde At Berneval
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

This third collection of poetry by Sam Kashner strives to coalesce around a palpable theme, its four, sub-titled sections - "Swimming Lessons," "Don Quixote in America'" "Pictures at an Inhibition," and "Gogol's Soul" - pulling in directions of their own, and rather incongruously linked. The book's title suggests more than the context Kashner offers as a whole. At his best the poet achieves a classic lamentive tone that often breaks into moments of exquisite lyricism, interrupted occasionally, but not unduly marred, by sometimes awkward similes. The heart of Kashner's book, however, is in the collection's title section where the poet's classicist overtones flower and take root in a graceful, elegiac blend overlaid with a modernist sensibility. He grapples with the eternal challenge of love, death, and resistance, though at times falling into the oblique and inaccessible, the poetry's mood sometimes becoming static, weighing down its lyrical effects. Kashner's classical allusions, on the other hand, add beauty to his tone. However, they also tend to weigh down their accessibility, with passing reference to everyone from Dante to Spinoza, Ruskin, and Picasso to Dolores Del Rio and Dr. Clitterhouse, suggesting perhaps a self-imposed obligation to make poetic genuflections to the West's artistic heritage. As a consequence, the book doe not clearly realize any thematic cohesion save for its self-titled middle section from which the book takes it title. With some judicious editing of poems of decidedly inferior quality such as "The Donny and Marie Lunchbox" that can barely match in strength and beauty other work in the collection, Kashner's strong, lyricist voice will come forward where it belongs, uncluttered by weaker, less successful pieces. For those with an appreciation for classicism expertly realized in a modernist context, Kashner's collection is richly rewarding. -- From Independent Publisher