White Monkeys: Poems

by Bin Ramke

Genres: Poetry

95 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1981

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend recommended I read this book. He used to know Bin Ramke personally and took a class (or two) with him years ago. It is a solid poetry collection, and having read it, I'm curious to read more of Ramke's work. A number of the poems did not work so well for me because of the collage style where there are a series of fragments in need of a consciousness to bring them together. Others were equally mysterious to me because of the omissions of details--sort of a highly-chiseled riddle where you need to sniff out what the poem is about based on the clues. However, all the lines and language reads well throughout. And quite of few poems do in fact provide enough content to be comprehensible. The ones I appreciated the most were scenes from Columbus, Georgia (where Ramke taught) and the mini-domestic dramas where the reader is invited into the minds of those trying to hash out their disappointments, failures, desires and relationships.