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Rating:  - A Diamond in the Rough
In the steaming pile that is postwar American poetry, this is a true diamond in the rough. Radio, Radio is one of the most original works in decades. With this stunning debut, Ben Doyle smashes poetic convention just as he smashed fashion convention with the Male Tube Top.
Rating:  - Finally....
a book I can go to like I used to go to Championship Vinyl when I was a wee teen. By which I mean it's nice to find a book that's lively, full of life (rangingly intellectual without the defensive hang-ups of the didactically theoretical, not afraid of the body, not afraid, thankfully, of sentiment), that seems to enjoy language for its very balance between precision and imprecision, between the vertical depth of its etymology and its narcotic pharmacology. The book runs through the self-assured poses of the Rock 'n Roll-auteur...but they're just that, "poses", linguistic tricks, gestures, and acrobatics tried on at dizzying speeds in an attempt to counteract the underlying sense of ennui and emotional defeat attendant with (sorry) millenial America. Go to these as you might go to see a great band -- Built to Spill, GBV, the Replacements circa 1984 (yes the poems are a bit drunk at times) -- partly for the way in which their virtuosity allows escape and partly for the way in which they bring you back to what you want to escape from, newly charged. Sure, these poems might do a line of coke with your girlfriend in a bathroom stall, but when they come back out they still have the heart to buy you a drink and give you a ride home. In the end, these poems are hyper-kinetically intelligent, formally blinding, full of sweet bravado, and tuned into an ultra-high frequency. They're also fun. Judging by the comments of some others on here I'd say that may be a problem for some people....
Rating:  - Uneventful, Unimaginative, Flat
The book was recommended to me and I'm sorry but I can't return the favor. It's a horrible mix of self-serving intellectual (but not very interestingly intellectual) word play and weak sentimetal gestures toward emotional expressiveness.
Rating: - Brilliant Poet and Inventor
Ben Doyle is a poet of uncommon talent. His poems move me in a way few others have. Not since reading the works of Tim Liu have I had such a wonderous experience. On a side note, not only is Mr. Doyle a gifted poet, he is also a fashion visionary having designed both the Male Tube Top and the Thigh Sweat Band.
Rating: - More than "Creative Writing"
Whenever I hear someone gripe about creative writing programs dire influence over American Poetry, it is usually clear that "someone" was unable to secure a spot at a creative writing program of choice. Jealousy aside, why not attempt to actually say something substanitive about why a group of poems does not fufill you as a reader.
Who knows how a first book of poems will hold up over time, but it is clear that the formal, irreverent, intelligent and purely mad wit at work in "Radio, Radio" is the real thing. Many of the poems employ dark tones that cohere through a Keatsian style of moving into the imagination and back out to the actual so repeatedly and so quickly that the senses can longer distinguish the two. Keats is after all the major influence at work here and these poems accordingly are lyric and obsessive. Many people who haven't studied Keats closely will only see the influence as it is filtered through contemporaries like Ashbery or Tate and cry foul, but the influence is hardly obscured--an early (and the best) poem in the collection paraphrases "Ode to a Nightingale" repeatedly. This is an immensely enjoyable collection of poems. I for one will be rereading it, and I suspect other readers will enjoy it just as much.
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