Los hombres

by Lisa Robertson, Jèssica Pujol Duran (Translator)

En Los hombres: un libro lírico, Lisa Robertson ensaya con ironía, ternura y rencor la construcción de los hombres. Transita desde lo conceptual a lo carnal, los vuelve corpóreos, frágiles y finitos: los hombres son una idea, pero también una pluralidad que desborda la sentencia: «El concepto de los hombres es elástico». Alojada en esa elasticidad, teje un ritmo que nos mece e hipnotiza; su finísimo trabajo con la sintaxis, el encabalgamiento y la repetición hace del poema una canción especulativa, una tarea laboriosa que bordea y borda el misterio de lo que los hombres son o podrían ser: hábiles, glamorosos, pesados como el humo, dulces, insípidos, compasivos, ávidos, espirituales, poderosos, sublimes, débiles, ardientes, pobres, eruditos, fálicos y aburridos. Tomando la posición del yo lírico de la tradición trovadoresca y del amor cortés, Robertson invierte el binomio y escribe desde el lugar de una mujer contemporánea, lúcida y harta de «la escuela de los errores».

Genres: Poetry

121 pages

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last Fall, I saw Robertson read on a roster with 4 men. Interestingly enough, when it was her turn to read, about 25 percent of the audience dispersed. (My roommate, Kristy Odelius, insists that about 50 percent left). Why, you may ask? The toilet was calling, fatigue from a long reading had set in, or the longing for Peroni was inescapable. I think The Men attempts to address this emblematic situation.

Robertson’s book seems to be an effort at reconfiguring the famous Man Ray photograph from 1924, “Waking Dream Séance,” in which a woman (Simone Breton) is seated before a typewriter, haloed by hovering male surrealists, presumably transcribing their dreams, not her own; thus, situating her as a secretarial medium.

Alluding to Dante and Petrarch, famous for their use of female muses, Robertson’s book is an attempt to let men play the cypher for once. (In my imaginary cover of Robertson’s book, Dirk Bogarde would be the man seated before the typewriter surrounded by numerous women writers). Divided into 5 sections, the poem is highly alliterative and allusive, sometime so much that one gets folded up in the incantation of it, or as she says, in the “lyrical comportment of succulence.” This lyricism, in part created by the linkage of slant-rhymes, is evidenced as she moves, on page 67, staircase-style from “subtle” to “mental” to “gentle” to “trembling” to “humble” to “umbrella.” These words are then cross-stitched with numerous repetitions of “men” and “spirit/spiritual.” The word “men” becomes the bass note of the book. Though extremely clever, Robertson’s book is much more than a postmodern ass-pinch. She attempts to re-direct and subvert history’s notion of the muse, highlighting female agency, by issuing declaratives at the end of many of the pages, especially in the first section: “I salute this,” “I love it exceedingly,” “I am shady and terrestrial,” oscillating between the individual and the collective, between the singular and plural of “man/men, and I/we. The Men is both an homage to men and an apostrophe to desire, as well as being a biting manifesto against male privilege.

I would be very interested in what male readers (both who love and hate this book) have to say about it.

[Emilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es de esas veces que no entiendo del todo lo que acabo de leer, pero lo que entiendo me gusta

[Bonnie Jean Michalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyric indeed! This book is an enticing mix of sharp repetition, elongated syntax and refracted voice: “Such is the potent harmony.” She also writes: “I am preoccupied with grace/And have started to speak expensively.” And whether the language is hers or theirs or ours, this book uses its language to order us, gracefully, to pay attention to [the cost of] the words we use and how words are used to name, to define and to lay claim: “The value of the/money is changed according to the men who repeat/virtue and truth, virtue and truth and things written on/coins accordingly.” I love love love this book.

[alcides · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Y estoy cansada. El deseo de algunos
No es mi deseo, y el deseo
De algunos es dulce en mi estimación. Pero
Hay cosas distintas y cosas
Nuevas en cualquier clima. Algunos
Creen que la pobreza es savia para un poeta
Y algunos siempre buscarán
Otro amor, otra hoja, otra luz. »

[cy]

Ok I think what’s hard for me sometimes about reading books of poetry is that even when I “finish” them, they don’t feel finished, not in the same way it feels to “finish” a novel. And not to say that novels don’t linger with me, but a book of poems has no plot line that concludes, and so I frequently will read the final poem and then just sit with the book by my bedside for a few weeks letting it percolate but not coming any closer to a sense of understanding or finitude. And it’s the same thing with this book. Not that I don’t feel or hear what Robertson is saying on some instinctual level, but it sort of hovers in the inarticulable, and it’s hard not to feel like that’s the point of poems.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

LR is gushy awesome, as most would agree. This short lyric book follows her notes of men over the course of two months in Vancouver. It's simple in its lists, sporadic details, and continual turning back to the subject from the tangents that emerge. There's some sort of intimacy going on here where the traditionally objectified female POV is in turn using the same shape of perspective to break down this bifocal relationship. What comes across at the end is something along the lines of admiration for the standard roles of modern relationships and sexuality, and also a bit of romantic/nostalgic/apathy in that acknowledgment. Which is kinda what the lyric is for, no?

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful book speaks in orders of a middle voice to the category of the homosocial, and specifically its category of the Other, so it's a cosmological book, and alters the environment in which cosmos responds to its orders being joined. Robertson has a lovely modest insight here. Hers seems truly what she calls it, "A Lyric Book."

[Kyle]

"Men, I'm sad I must die.
These are beautiful shores."

[Luna Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

SÍ.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

she's right btw

[Josefa_vbs]

Los hombres convierten constructos limitados en patrones fáciles. Ellos los determinan. Ellos señalan la imagen y nutren sus corazones. Se dan el tiempo de analizar las condiciones frecuentemente. Las órdenes de los hombres se estratifican por otros medios –al final de sus fronteras queda un espacio libre, indiferente y neutral que es la sexualidad de los hombres y ellos sufren. Ellos normalmente albergan los cuerpos de sus padres en sus cuerpos y en la médula.
Los hombres tienen diversos encantos que embriagan con vibraciones de ahí su opinión…

[Pablo López Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"La verdadera prehistoria del agua
Es por los hombres oportunos es por
La palpación anterior que surge
En una arboleda de encinas
La adorable problemática política
Hombres jóvenes de privilegio avergonzados volviéndose
Menos adorables pensé palabras y las
Olvidé.



A los hombres bajo el pasto vi
Hasta que ha habido hombres
Como estos solos o en el mundo
Y hombres ardientes como los años
Los hombres me cierran los ojos como aquellos
Que me derritieron a su marcha.
Me temo que la vida cambiará antes
Que los hombres e incluso de que te
Repongas, los cielos de los hombres
Ya lo han hecho. Culpable
¿De dónde sacaste el resplandor
Dorado del alerce
Dejando tan poco?"

[Kacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I’m going to reread this or at least pack it in my bag whenever I attend a male-centric poetry gathering. I think I want to send this to everyone I know who might find it subtly offensive to their nerves- so that they may understand why I sometimes bristle in turn at the canon they love.

[Isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todo lo que tenía que entender sobre el amor lo entendí en este libro

[June García · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sí sí sí. Hombres hombres con su blah blah blah. Muy divertido e inteligente. Una genia, Lisa Robertson.

"No se habla de los hombres por capricho"

[Amanda Lucek]

Upon my first reading, I became seriously frustrated. Since the work is not divided up into separate poems, given separate titles, I viewed it as a singular, drawn out work. This is _is_, but its singularity is achieved solely through the common thread of subject (men) and NOT through a common & consistent attitude towards, or even a consistent definition of, that subject. The passages of text comprising this book serve as a collection, or perhaps even a collation, of numerous & disparate ideologies, numerous points of view.

The title of the book is in this way somewhat misleading: were the work to have been entitled simply "Men" (which is a plural noun) I believe it would have been much easier to view it as pastiche, whereas "THE Men" (a singular collective noun) seems to lump all men under discussion into some sort of unified group. But really either title lends itself to an assumption of a feminist point of view, which society has conveniently pigeonholed into an unwaveringly man-hating. Even amongst liberals, a text perceived as "feminist" is assumed to have a consistent underlying thesis towards men (namely that they are oppressors).

In my first (frustrating) reading my mind set about trying to resolve the meaning of each succeeding fragment, each passage, by interpreting it in terms of the definitions, narratives, and general portrayals that proceeded it (in other world, trying to make each passage an example of an overarching conception/depiction of Maleness). This constituted the most absolutely wrong track to take.

Luckily I was able to figure that out relatively early on. On the 3rd page of text (page 11 of the book), we encounter the lines "What we refer to as men is any / Communication we begin to perpetrate." After reading that passage I began, a bit obsessively, to try to comprehend all following usages of the term "men" as being not about physical men at all, but solely as metaphors regarding communication. The stress of trying to make this metaphor make sense in subsequent passages, was, in retrospect, perhaps an absurd endeavor. Looking back on my efforts to create coherence (by trying to force this definition of the word "men" into contexts where it was clearly UN-intended) I can only see my efforts as being slightly less misguided than those of a student trying to interpret a textbook on geology completely in terms of an introductory "fluff" chapter whose hope is to increase the interest of the student in the subject of rocks by waxing romantic upon the cultural importance of stones throughout history which elaborates especially upon the metaphor in Greek Mythology wherein a stone is seen as the transformed substance of a woman. Though I realize that that particular comparison is perhaps overly cruel. In poetry, perhaps it is not so absurd after all to try to view statements in a wholly new way, as new meanings are ascribed to the words of which they are comprised. Poetry embraces specifically difficult metaphors in ways that textbooks do not.

And really, my time spent agonizing over what passages such as "when a man's name is sewn into the label of my coat" (pg 39) "truly" signified if men were, actually, communication (not to mention the utter confusion introduced by the declaration that what was called a man is now to be called hydromel, after which pronunciation is made no lessening of the use of the word "men" is to be espied) – well I think that time was spent primarily in trying to open my mind to possibilities, to find links, and to think, overall, much more deeply and much more symbolically that I have in quite some time, and can that truly be said to be wasted time at all? And perhaps my muddling around trying to divine connections that simply weren't there also helped to make the text that much more profound when I "realized" the actual nature of the text as a fragmentary dialogue of many voices instead of as a problematic monologue in need of intense deciphering.

My "insight", slow though it may have been in coming, then, was that the text of The Men does not depict men as if they can be treated as a uniform population, but rather highlight the essentially fragmented and often contradictory or fluctuating associations that you or I or the world may have towards men and the term "men".

***

I realize in my ramblings I have said really rather little about the book – I described my own personal shift in my essential conception of the text, but have done so without particularly describing that text in any meaningful way. I will make a cursory effort to remedy that here:

It is notable that the book is divided into 5 sections:
- Men Deft Men
- Evening Lit the Gnat
- A Record
- Of the Vocable
- True Speech

The differences between these divided sections – the qualities that cause each to have a slightly different feel to it – are hard to pin down. Trying to elucidate connections of subject matter or of tone would require a much more in depth analysis of the book than I have time to give it, and even then I fear that the texts within a particular chapter are linked in a manner that can be felt more than it can be described in words.

An interesting note: Not too far into the book, I recognized on pg 16 the phrase "Sweet new style", which had been the ending line of the very first section/paragraph of the book. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but after embarking on to chapter 2 (if these divisions can be called chapters) I noticed the same occurrence: a single phrase (in this case "last human things") repeated within the chapter – apparently with no other repetitions. I began to wonder if every chapter would be this way: containing one and only one repeated phrase. Unfortunately, I did not find conclusive evidence of this throughout the rest of the book, but that may very well be attributed to the decline in what I notice in a poem that corresponds to increased attempts to maintain a more workable (i.e. faster) pace of reading. If I had the time I would reread each of the last 3 chapters, giving them this time the attention needed for the task, and make a more aggressive attempt to ferret out the presence of this form in every section.

***

What review is complete without actual textual examples? Here are a few of the ways in which the book manifests contradictions:

The men are often described in terms of reverence, with an implicit desire for their attention:
"adoring and adoring them. / Amazement" (29)
"You really love / the men. / We do." (20)
"I thank them." (39)
But this is contradicted by a quote which seems to portray the men's attention as entirely unwelcome:
"If the men turn towards me / Where are the rights of my solitude?" (22)
And both points of view (both expressing a strong reaction to the presence of men) are negated by the simple statement:
"I… forgot / Them." (25)

A particularly straightforward example of contradiction is seen in the comparison of the following two passages:
"Unavoidably the men / All… stand alone" (26)
"There is no man alone" (42)

Another notable example is how men are portrayed unerringly as intellectuals of the highest order in the quote:
"… the men / Rise from civil business to / Theological truth and the wooing / of it" (22)
Only to have it implied on the very next page that men possess no intellect whatsoever:
"Wrath of the men / Is very long as if / The men had intellect" (23)
The sense of which is strengthened by another implication later on that seems to hint that men's natural state is one of ignorance:
"I cannot condemn a man for ignorance" (41)

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Men deft men mental men of loving men all men
Vile men virtuous men same men from which men
Sweet and men of mercy men such making men said
Has each man that sees it
Cry as men to the men sensate
Conceptual recognition the men
And their poverty speaking to the men
Is about timeliness men is about
Previous palpability from which
The problematic politics adorable
And humble especially
Young men of sheepish privilege becoming
Sweet new style

- pg. 9

* * *

Sensate conceptual recognition the men
And their poverty speaking
Language this theoretical
Clatter the pigeons on the ridgepole fluff
And fuck and fly off

The funny pathos of men - I salute this.

- pg. 13

* * *

I've sexually seen the opacity of men.
I feel modest about it.

- pg. 24

* * *

How do I make them actual?
I stand or fall with the solution
And the thickness of the lives I stand on
Or this is all in vain - thus
Their transcendental problem.

- pg. 34

* * *

Awful sighs that never end I venture from my style
Against style
As birds, grass, evening
Temporarily boy-like
To make the thing intelligible.
The same actions are free
That caption
Determination
Such as awful sighs that never end
In cinema
In fact
This is all I require -
That in the literal transparency
I see the dark of evening
I see the night of the green woods tomorrow
I see animate and waiting a rich shore
That's neither love nor notes, freedom nor reason, story nor lyric, boredom nor strings,
Albertine.

- pg. 44

* * *

With constancy and languor and a simple face
To find what is constant
I write
In the bonny day of them
With equal acuteness and clearness
In the bonny day of them
Among these various attitudes
I never sigh, I never sigh
At volition
Nor the little leaves opening
What's loved and known is hydromel
The rest, prudence.

This is my first true speech.

- pg. 59

* * *

Subtle men
Men mental
Men of love
Gentle

Spirit tossed
Visual spirits
With spirituality of trembling
That makes them humble

Any specific man moves
His sweet soft spirit
Beneath Wednesday's umbrella

The spiritual men are poor.
Though it pours from their eyes
Their strength empties itself.
I spoke in their voices.

- pg. 67

[Pablo López Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Todos los hombres hoy en día querrían vestirse de
Dolor y ruido. Todos los hombres
Parecen pensar. En sus ojos
Persiste esa carga.
Yo sufro por igual. La ira
Efímera de los hombres
Es muy larga como si
Los hombres tuvieran intelecto
Y alas y las voces
De la gente. Los hombres
Existen
Contra la gravedad y fracasan. Ellos arman
Con precisión y gran
Densidad
Demasiada información.
Los hombres son frágiles y finitos
Involuntarios los hombres
Restriegan por
Las calles de los siglos
Los nombres de las mujeres que hay en ellas
Desplazando los muslos de las mujeres
Directamente.



Tal vez esta es la fantasía
De los hombres. Su casa
Como la luz del sol
Antes de penetrar. Las muchachas
En nuestros vestidos
Imprimimos vestidos de recuerdo. La luz
Gotea y produce
Libertad
Sexualmente."

[Josefa_vbs]

En cuanto a los hombres, arrojamos nuestras declinaciones
y conjugaciones de un lado a otro como hacen ellos
que por medio de un cierto juego […]

[Moose · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found Lisa Robertson’s lyric book The Men to be like most modern poetry books I have read – mostly nonsensical, yet clearly it is intended to have a purpose. Perhaps I am wrong, and Lisa Robertson is capable of publishing a book that either has no objective whatsoever, or has the objective to connect with readers via whatever meaning the words have to them. But, I subject that idea is simply not true.
Nonetheless, it is interesting that Robertson and so many other poets choose this form that could easily be read by a person not well versed in the humanities, like myself, to draw the conclusion from it that the work is mostly nonsensical. In fact, I submit that even those people versed in the humanities may not draw the intended conclusions from it, as left to their own devices audiences will tend to draw the wrong conclusion. The fact that Robertson and other poets choose to write in this style thus indicates something about their values – perhaps that the succinct and efficient transfer of ideas and thoughts amongst people is unimportant. This idea therefore makes people’s time unimportant, perhaps propelling these poets towards an inefficient immortality.
But lets get to the text itself. To start off, Robertson states early on that “To speak of the men is no trifle”. The fact that this phrase is not only a repetition, but also separated from the rest of the lines and in italics sends a bit of a message. However, to speak of the men is still important enough to do it despite the fact that it is no trifle.
In the beginning of the second section, we see the introduction of other stuff like gnats, dogs, and a boy. The gnat and dogs are an interesting contrast to the men, as they are gender neutral. She further proceeds to say that what she called the men is now hydromel, which she also links to poverty. Finally, in this section she uses the words ‘a man’ rather than the men for the first time, and ultimately begins to describe all men as one and the same. I found this to be ineffective since it is so clearly not true.
Another example that stuck with me from the text was “The sidewalks in the light are the sidewalks of childhood with the men walking on them past the trees of childhood also and the sky flattened with light as in the childhood of the men. Memory stands up in slow motion and moves in the light." The abstract imagery of the memory standing up contrasts the other imagery and should therefore call attention to it, however to me it is not clear why. I found this to be eye catching and distracting, and it was text like this that made me not quite relate to the author or understand her text.

[dana ☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️ 4,5.

Inside the men are people. They have a small dreamy heart.

The men are as mysterious as art

How boring and fascinating the men. / I do this for them with structure and bigness.

[Jcasper · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only way I can really describe my personal response to this book is that of skepticism. A book titled “The Men,” with every single poem some form of that word, but written by a woman? How can I possibly trust this book? The book isn’t about men, it’s about a woman’s opinion of men. As a male reader, I had a hard time coming to terms with that distinction, and from the first few pages fell into a state of general mistrust of the book.

I tried to read more into the mind of the author than simply try to take the book in and try to come up with my own conclusions. As such, the content didn’t really provide much meaning for me personally. It did, however, offer some fascinating insights into the author’s mind. One passage, which I took almost to be the book’s thesis is: “We shall not discover men in the concept/ Nor in their calls on the stair/ In my intuition no man belongs in the concept/ With his remorse/ Ordinarily the men are preamble/ Trashfuck or hydromel”. Seriously? We’re ordinarily preamble trashfuck? I’m kind of insulted. Needless to say, I didn’t give the book a whole lot of credit after reading that. But I will say that regardless, it’s a very interesting experiment in defining gender roles. As for the poems themselves, I found them to be extremely disconnected. This makes sense given that the method for writing them was that there was little to no editing – only addition. The huge number of times the words “men” and “man” did created an interesting effect, though. Each poem felt like an onslaught of gender role characterizations, and created almost and splattering or scattershot of accusations about both genders. In that sense, it succeeded admirably.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though this wasn’t my favourite book of poetry, I related to both the subject matter and the writing style more than anything else I’ve read recently. As the title suggests, each line explodes the idea of men, manhood, masculinity, etc. Thoughts and phrases didn’t necessarily flow into one another seamlessly which sometimes made the poems feel choppy (not necessarily a bad thing). I find I digest poetry in fragments. I am rarely able to interpret entire blocks of texts. Certain lines strike me. Brief phrases seem important. This book felt like it was written by sewing together individually written lines. This style of writing appeals to me; taking a slew of well written lines, and organizing them in a particular way.
Robertson tackles her themes from every single point of view. From line to line, the voice seems to change. I am curious about how she chooses where he line breaks fall. Often, the choices seemed random. Sometimes line breaks obviously emphasized specific lines, but often, the choices were more subtle and confusing to me.
Robertson often writes in an authoritative voice. There are no options. What is being said is declared as fact. “All men these days would like to wear Grief and noise. All men Seem to think. In their eyes Remains that live burden.” These are subjective statements spoken as fact. However, ideas constantly contradict one another. The contradictions seem just as factual as the original statements.

[Hannah Antalek · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Men creates a lot of frustration for the reader. There are no individual titles, the page breaks seem arbitrary, there is no overarching narrative and little unifies each page from the next aside from the common theme of men.
When I began reading this book I felt a similar frustration and put it down for quite some time before finishing it. When I picked it up for the second time I approached it differently and as a result felt that I had an easier time getting into it. My approach in reading it the second time around was to embrace the process Robertson took in writing it and not try to make it fit into the mold of other books of poetry I had read prior. Robertson’s writing process of this book was not reductive, as most editing processes seem to be, but additive. Culled from a massive manuscript, Robertson wrote without eliminating any portion of the text. Adding instead of deleting Robertson continuously inserted sentences, words and letters to change any part of the text that she felt needed to be edited. In creating the final product of The Men (a tiny thing considering its massive process) Robertson extracted all the passages in which she used ‘the men’ and in doing this created an intimate portrait of her relationship to men in often humorous, yet sometimes heart-breaking lyric verse.
When read this way the inconsistent formatting seems irrelevant and the focus is left on the text alone.

[Christian Haines · Rating 3 out of 5]

When reading this book, I tend to think of computer programming, specifically of algorithmic permutation (a determined form of repetition producing patterned differences). In the case of The Men, Robertson creates endless new permutations of Men - Men as philosophical categories, as tones, as feeling states, as objects and subjects. All of this as a kind of reversal of the typical male gaze penetrating the female body. But not quite a reversal. More of an analysis and dissolution of the categories that constitute what it means to be a man and to be a woman. Some may find this boring. Robertson works away at the concept of Men to reveal fissures in it, and to turn these fissures into new openings, new affects. This can mean a kind of tedium reinforced by the way the poem (or poems, depending on your point of view) exists in a general present tense with few active verbs (Men are like this ... Men are like that...). But the tedium of permutation, of endless repetition laced with incremental differences, paves the way for delicious occasions: the men are explorers in African dramas, always opening new lands for colonization, and they are the "purple scarf" that is this poem... But always the estranging definite noun that makes of men a singular entity ever intruding.

[Rr Sigel]

I’m relieved to read others’ reviews of this book and see that they found it similarly frustrating and disconnected. Since finishing it, I’ve stewed over what I’m “missing.” There’s no way a female writer can write a book so centered around “the men” and not have it be as much about women as it is about men, and so dug away in here is some comment on gendered dynamics. That said, the poetry itself is so convoluted and disconnected that any unifying purpose seems almost accidental. In this collection, “the men” seem to operate in a world free of any mention of “the women,” an ignorance which must be purposeful. But the extensive rebranding and redefinition of “the men” left me thinking, “...so what?”

There were many moments I liked, without quite understanding why. Some of the language Robertson uses is interesting and compelling and gave me pause to think “what a cool way of creating that image.” But I did not find that those images had any real tie-ins with a greater narrative, and so it struck me more as the imagery of an interesting poetic mind than as the purposeful, developed images of a narrative that a title/concept like “The Men” warrants.

[Zach Alterman]

I do not have much to say about this book.I will feel uncomfortable bullshitting and making connections and meanings I found in the book which did not actually happen, and so I won't. The book turned into one object for me - I felt as though I would have gotten the same out of reading the first five pages as I did by reading this whole book. There is obviously much meaning to be gleaned from The Men and I am being lazy and somewhat immature but I was not interested in giving it more effort than I did. Some poetry just resonates very well with me and evokes emotion and thought - and some does not. Maybe one day I will understand Lisa Robertson and her musings.

Also I read this book during a week where I was in a generally disinterested emotional state which was the main reason for this reaction. And I find this very interesting - your mood being the most important factor in the ability for a piece of art to move you, not the content or the context.
but then again - I have read it again and still am not interested

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is deceiving in its size and shape. I thought it would be a fast and simple read, but these poems (or sections of a poem) took me some time to take in. I still don't feel like I really understand them, but a part of me relates to these. I was also surprised by the mix of style--sometimes there were lots of rambling parts, while others had complete sentences and thoughts. Even the scrambled parts had meaning, and I loved the use of prepositions to lengthen certain thoughts. With that said, there are also certain parts that are obvious, blunt, and self-reflective. These parts, such as "This is a speculative song./ I hope to advance further./ It is the most difficult task I have undertaken," definitely guided me in how to interpret the rest of the text. Aside from the different styles and structures Robertson uses, the sounds also did a lot for me. I think I need to read this book again to be able to appreciate it more.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was enjoyable for the most part because of the language. I thought that the subtitle of "A Lyric Book" was very fitting and perfectly described the nature of the words--much of the book read like song lyrics and had a music quality. The recurring descriptions of "the men" within the poem also enhanced the song-like quality by giving it a sort of "refrain." The diction in itself was beautiful--I particularly enjoyed the first page of the "Of the Vocable" section. "It sits, it/Emits, it leaves the solemn limit/Beneath a tent of lilac/I want a simple book too, I want those/Fabulous testimonies in the style/Of toile de jouy, I want them to bestir/Themselves..." I was interested afterwords in the parallels between song lyrics and poetry and what separates them. I believe that Lisa Robertson uses repetition, simple sentences, refrains, and beautiful language to bring poetry closer to song.

[Gus Wenner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robertson has a unique tone in The Men that intrigued me throughout. At times I felt as if I was sitting right next to her as she was writing. As she explores men, and herself, I began to build a relationship with the author - a certain sense of intimacy that can easily be lost in poetry. There is not one specific style, or one specific theme that ties this book together. It is often a mix, a clutter of thoughts, darkness, questioning the meta-narrative, that make this book feel familiar, feel close. Her language is filled with thoughts and questions that guide the poems - at times i wanted to converse with her, but all in all i am satisfied with listening to her converse with herself. "How do I make them actual?/ I stand or fall with the solution/ and the thickness of the lives that I stand on/ or this is all in vain - thus/ their transcendental problem." This was a really good read.