Postmodern poetry presents a fragmented vision of life. Generally, I abhor the stretched and difficult metaphors that signify this kind of poetry. Hass appeared on the reading list for a class I am taking, so ignoring it or not reading was not an option. I read some of these poems several times, and many of the metaphors did not make any sense to me. I could not even find one poem I really liked, that was memorable, or that I would want to pin to a bulletin board. He served as poet laureate of the US in the late 90s, but guess what? Sometimes the emperor has no clothes. Don’t waste you time or your money. Read Billy Collins. 1 star for one poem, “Spring Drawing,” which did have some nice, intelligible images.

--Jim, 8/23/09 ( )