Valuing: Poems

National Poetry Series

by Christopher Kondrich

In his second collection, Christopher Kondrich navigates the link between what we see as our inner value and the external world that supplies it. Valuing ’s deeply personal poems explore faith, love, ethics, and mortality from a variety of angles and through a variety of poetic forms as a means of questioning the origination of one’s own value system. Does it come from the belief in a god, from the love one gives or receives, or from the diminution of the self and its desires? If “you cannot sneak through your life,” as the speaker of one of Valuing ’s poems proclaims, then how might one ensure that the noise a life inevitably makes is an echo of the values one holds dear?

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

Christopher Kondrich is a poet and writer whose most recent books are Tread Upon (Copper Canyon Press, 2026) and Valuing (University of Georgia Press, 2019). His poems appear widely in such venues as The Atlantic, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry London, and The Yale Review, and he has received fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo. He is also the co-editor of Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation and an associate editor for 32 Poems. He is currently Poet-in-Residence for the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland.

Reviews

[Val Timke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a person who reads poetry on a whim. Occasionally, I want something quick that can whisk me away faster than a novel can. I received this as an e-ARC from University of Georgia Press and I am really grateful for the opportunity to read and review this poetry collection.

I read it in two sittings but mainly one. I want to say (and I feel like a broken record) that before I give my in-depth thoughts, I am by no means a poetry expert and can only express my personal experience with this collection. That said, poetry is not an easy thing to review. I'm going to try to break it down by saying what I liked about his poetry and what didn't sit well with me. Mostly I found structural issues and lack of meaning but ultimately I did give this collection three stars for the poems I did enjoy. I do think the author has a lot of future potential based on the parts of his poetry I did like and I would read from him in the future. I don't mean to nitpick and I certainly don't mean to tell the author how he did his poetry was wrong. Again, these are personal opinions and it is very possible I am not in his target audience.

A few poems were too confusing for me, especially "Division of Labor." There were parts I wanted to like - the description of the lily pads and the way the author clearly wanted to paint a scene. There was so much potential. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell where one thing connected to another or of what significance an event was taking place. I could feel the poem turning more into a narrative and by the end, I had no idea what had really happened. I was left with no desire to reread it and figure it out.

"Clearing" was such an amazing poem. If there's one whole poem I had no issues with, it was this one. While other poems left me wanting less, this one left me wanting more.

"Map of Belonging" instantly caught my attention. There was something there, something really special. The way my e-ARC is it's all blocked together and not really in "poetry" form and I'm not really sure if it's supposed to be but this piece starts out as really promising and even ends that way. The middle was a bit confusing for me but it was a short piece and I'm glad I read it.

"Bellfounding" started really well and the end was okay but it didn't feel whole. In the end, a poem is supposed to feel whole (or at least I think so) and it felt like I was reading bits of two different great poems that didn't fit together. It felt like the author was struggling to bridge.

"Caedmon" was psychologically exciting and felt the most whole of the other poems I've read. My only criticism is that it had a few lines with a quality below that of their surrounding lines.

I did not like "Previously Forgotten" at all. It didn't pull me in at the beginning and it was longer than all the other poems. It dragged for me.

"Multiverse" was a solid poem. I wished the word choice would've been a little simpler in some areas. The occasional fancy word is fine but when they're relied upon to convey a feeling rather than a meaning, things can get a little messy.

"Their Papers" was below level of some of the other poems from this collection. I passively read it. It was fine, nothing good nothing bad, until the last line. The last line was well-structured and a great concept but the problem was, it didn't have a supporting backbone.

"Degree of Nothing" was too short to get anything out of and I didn't understand why it was included.

"Schedule for Burning" and "Remonstrance" were great poems and were perhaps my favorites. They held clear, concise concepts and were executed with clear, concise words. "Object Permanence" started out with the same potential but fell into the same category as "Previously Forgotten."

There were some poems named after concepts that tell a story but had I not read the title, I wouldn't have known what the author was trying to say. As a rule of thumb, these were the poems I was particularly puzzled by while the longer poems were the ones that lost my interest.

[Isaac Salazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who’s existentially felt like they’ve arrived at the end of a sentence many times, this was a nice collection to read. Makes me wonder…if we know nothing about nothing don’t we know everything?

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poetry collection would be a good choice for an experienced poem connoisseur. It's a fairly short collection that doesn't have a particular theme, which is one of the reasons why it didn't especially resonate with me. The poems are collected from various publications, so it's a varied sampling of the author's work.

I did like the formatting of the poems, because it's very traditional. Many people don't like the Instagram poet trend that has been sweeping the book world for the past couple years. If that's the case for you, then Valuing would be a good collection to read, because it's fairly standard poetry: capitalization, grammar, and stanzas. It's still free verse but it's more formal.

I, however, am quite a fan of the insta-poet phenomenon, because it's easier to understand. Because of this, I feel that much of the poems in this collection went right over my uncultured head. But that's not the author's fault and it doesn't detract from my rating of 3 stars, meaning this is a solid, well-written collection that a lot of people will enjoy. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

*NetGalley provided me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is important to understand there is absolutely nothing behind nothing. And when you start with nothing, and you do something with nothing, but it feels like you would have been better off doing nothing with nothing, though it’s unclear if nothing can be done to nothing, like a phenomenology turned inside out, like a meditation on negating what the poet could have proposed were it not clear that nothing would swallow it up. The underlying irony in that establishing the grounds for a poem, like if a poem by its very existence indicates nothing cannot be nothing.

Reading Christopher Kondrich’s book, it might be helpful to start looking at nothing as not nothing. Sometimes maybe you think of your life as nothing. You endeavor on nothing at the beginning of anything, a poem, a day at work, the entirety of a life. You anticipate nothing good will come of nothing. And to have in mind either the paradox or the ironic edge that nothing at the beginning of a poem prepared to do nothing will likely result in something. But that something is, like, a myth about nothing, an anticipation that if an author were to be in mind of a literature destined to be forgotten before it was even remembered, or maybe a literature that was on the cusp of nothing even as it was coming into existence, there might be trouble.

Everywhere I look in Christopher Kondrich’s book, there is trouble. A trouble with nothing. Nothing doing or saying so much while insisting that it stands for nothing. Even while the poems are saying something. A sentence structure that delights in an ironic construction to innovate on the whole concept of nothing, even as it keeps saying things, and twisting a legend about nothing around what’s really nothing. That word play, that kind of dominant poetic style prepared to excavate a sentence’s sensibility, so the sentence can be extended.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Valuing, by Christopher Kondrich, is a collection of complex, whole-hearted poems. Despite the fact that I didn’t personally vibe with this writer’s style, I was impressed by the depth and wording in what is a fairly short, traditional collection.

Kondrich might appeal to a more patient connoisseur of poetry, but that just isn’t me at this point in my life. I can hardly blame the book for that.

If you’re a fan of poetry and you want to delve into something a little more ambiguous and complex, this might be right up your alley. Enjoy.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a pleasure to discover Christopher Kondrich's work in Valuing. These poems are personal and artistically rendered. There is something new to find and treasure in each of them as Kondrich uses verse to explore a variety of topics. As a lover of poetry, I would strongly recommend this author's work.

It is worth noting that Valuing is the poet's second collection -- and I loved this book enough to seek out the first book. I look forward to seeing what is next for this poet.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a lot of what I consider bad poems in this collection, poems that seemed pretentious due to their obscurity and inaccessibility. They were primarily in the first two-thirds of the book. Later poems were much better (Trust, Devouring Each Other). All in all, I would not recommend the collection as a whole but the last third of the collection is worth the read.

[Nathaniel Darkish · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an okay collection of poetry. There were occasional lines that stood out to me, but as a whole it didn't really catch my interest. I feel like Kondrich definitely has potential as a poet, but for whatever reason this just was pretty meh throughout.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection just didn’t hit home for me. I can recognize the talent in their writing and some of the lines were very well written. However, I just never understood the message they were trying to get across. Perhaps this would translate better as spoken word pieces.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a couple of poems here that I really liked - "Schedule for Burning" and the poems linked with the Goya paintings - but the others just didn't grab me at all. I found this collection a bit muted and boring.

[Cavak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't click with the religious poems too much, but the others were along my level. It was a mixed bag of give and take for me. Perhaps Kondrich's formatting style doesn't gel well with me? There are many blank pages for a collection that is so short.

[Cassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I personally did not care for this book. But maybe that is because I did not relate to many if any of the poems in the book. Figure the book was worth a shot though

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complex and thoughtful collection of short poems that managed to carry water theme throughout. A refreshing break from the fake poetry that social media has spawned.