Talked to sleep,
Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I wish I admired Lockwood’s collection, I really do. There are some poems that come close to successful, and one (“The Rape Joke”) which really hits home. Too many poems seem please with little dirty jokes or attempts at humor. “List of Cross-Dressing Soldiers” “The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple” and “The Descent of the Dunk” all come close. Too often I feel that what strives to be free and experimental is just undisciplined and needing rewriting.
The main conceit that nations and landscapes are treated as if human bodies and beings, and vice verse, just doesn’t work here for me.
Perhaps it is just me. But I really wanted to admire this collection. But as Lockwood might write, “Naaaaaaah.”