[How to Do Things with Tears] (By: Allen Grossman) [published: June, 2001]

by Allen R. Grossman

The award-winning poet's newest book of poems is heroic and of mythic proportions, showing the compassionate side of men. How to Do Things with Tears is a book of poems brought forth by the Sighted Singer, the poet who holds the central place in Allen Grossman's newest poetic work. "This is a how-to book," Grossman explains. "The heroic singer of tradition is blind. A new singer in this present must be sighted. In this book the poet intends to say something, insofar as a poet can, about the common sadness of living and dying in the world." Like the blind bard of old, Grossman's Sighted Singer conjures visions both high and low, in mythopoetic resonances that excite the sorrows and the laughter of the gods and men.Author How to Do Things with Tears is poet Allen Grossman's first collection since The Philosopher's Window (1995) and his ninth book of poetry. Among his many honors and awards are the Witter Byner Prize for Poetry, MacArthur, Guggenheim, and NEA fellowships, the PEN-Shaeffer/New England Award for Literary Distinction, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published May 1, 2001

Reviews

[Marshall A. Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The rating is for my experience of the book, and since I didn’t comprehend or enjoy almost any of it, I can’t give it a good rating. I don’t think every book should be accessible to everyone, as sometimes it’s contextually important or intentionally abstract. I’ve been reading poetry for a while and have more or less been able to find things to enjoy in most of the collections I’ve read, even if I didn’t fully understand the poems. This collection felt intentionally abstract in a way that didn’t make any sense to me. It included lots of reoccurring words or images from poem to poem, but the individual poems didn’t offer much for me to comprehend or appreciate. I’m not saying they’re bad poems, because this could be the intention and perhaps they’re even clever if you can decipher them, but they almost exclusively alluded me.

The couple of poems I found at least a little enjoyable were:

Elsie Young, aged pensioner, on Purgatory Mountain pt. 1
The Chinese Pot
Marriage

[Derek]

Conceptually fascinating, poetically uneven.