Against Romance
by Michael Blumenthal
A powerful collection of poems challenging romantic conventions
Poetry. A reprinted edition of the celebrated 1987 Penguin edition (a collection) by the 1985 winner of the Academy of American Poets Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award. "Blumenthal's new collection moves surely through the contradictions implied by its title. Belonging to the "central" modernist tradition of Wallace Stevens and informed by both wit and intelligence, the poems take us through a variety of topics and moods without losing sight of the book's pivotal experience, a divorce. Urbane, sophisticated, sometimes self-deprecatory, Blumenthal sustains an observant distance, which only emphasizes the romantic yearning underlying the book's theme. The best poems work well, arching toward an ethereal, metaphysical tone, as in these lines from the title poem: "and when life turns its dimmed lights up/ once again and the theater empties,/ they find the stranger love always delivers up." Other poems feel like exercises, but Blumenthal's voice is growing more authentic"--Library Journal.
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"I have no doubt in saying that Michael Blumenthal is one of the most talented poets of his generation."
— W.D. Snodgrass
"A wide-ranging imagination, technical brilliance, and a deeply humane voice make Michael Blumenthal's collection one of the most exciting to have come my way in the l980s."
— D.M. Thomas
"It is as difficult to dislike a Blumenthal poem as it is to dislike a piece by Mozart… There is such a good-natured generosity here, combined with a perhaps newly discovered or recently sense of self-limitation… How many poets are capable of making us laugh out loud, even on re-reading? Blumenthal does, and not just in one poem like "Dancing with a De-Constructionist," but time and time again… {Against Romance is} a testament to empowerment, to the resilience, one might say romantically, of the heart, or at least of decent speech."
— Kurt Heinzelman, The Massachusetts Review