Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

In many ways it seems unfair to shoot down a first book of poetry, but this isn't just a first book, it's a recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award. It's amazing to me that a work that wins this prize can be so obscure to me--and not only the poems themselves but also Richard Hugo's introduction, which didn't make much sense to me. I'm not a poetry newbie and I'm not a dolt. I even like surrealist poetry. But I guess I don't like poetry that is not surrealist but makes no effort at clarification and which creates metaphors which only further obscure-- usually comparing something physical to something abstract (rather than the reverse) presumably in an effort to either be or seem profound. (Sorry I didn't mark any of those passages for inclusion here as examples.)

Bin Ramke himself, as quoted on the Poetry Foundation's page about him (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/b...), says of his poetry, "It’s a combination of personal imagination and experience— experience in an unrecognizable form." How am I supposed to be able to relate to "experience in an unrecognizable form"? Even more perplexing, how is it that Russell Edson's surrealism often provides recognizable experience while Ramke's does not?

Not all of his poetry is obscure. And two I particularly liked. But they weren't worth the wade through the others. This volume includes a lot of sexual anxiety and guilt. Time seems to be his favorite abstraction.

Many of the books I read but don't especially like and wouldn't otherwise keep, I do keep because I would eventually like to open my collection to others in the area and thus would like to have a variety of examples--and to have some books that aren't so precious that I am happy to lend them. However, I won't be keeping this volume. There is something about it, which I should no doubt explore further so that I can articulate it, that strikes me as advocating or representing an error in poetry that was written in the 70s and 80s, perhaps through the nineties. Something that went wrong with the religion of "no ideas but in things" and Robert Bly's idea of the "leap," so that the poems end up being a conglomeration of things leaping as a fish wanting back in the water flops around on a dock, lacking both aim and grace.

I have heard this poet's name a number of times and often wondered what his poetry was like. I really appreciate the review because I understand now what makes him particular. Unfortunately I also don't like the overly (and personally) obscure.
Interesting to read this after Valerie's review of Cathy Song's volume, also a Yale Younger Poet series book.
thanks for reviewing.
sarah