My review of "From the Fever-World" up at the Rattle website

A quick note to say that my review of Jehanne Dubrow’s From the Fever-World should be up at the Rattle website here today.  I've been increasingly impressed with Dubrow's talent with each book of poems that she publishes; it was fascinating to revisit her earlier work.

I just finished Ann Patchett's State of Wonder.  I both loved it and found it tedious.  It's beautiful and lush and filled with poetic description.  I also found myself sinking into a sort of tropical torpor as I picked up the book each time to continue slogging through it.  Book as dense jungle--if I had to write a pithy description, there it would be.

And then, suddenly, the end arrives, like a hurricane.  I won't soon stop thinking about it and puzzling over it.  I'm kind of annoyed with the ending, frankly, and I find myself saying that more and more often in the past year.  Some would say it's out of frustration that I'm not writing books myself, but I don't think that's it.  I'm noticing books that I'm reading that don't quite deserve the endings that they have:  they haven't earned them or they come to suddenly or they make no sense or the book just comes crashing to a halt.  More on that later, perhaps.