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Rating:  - A "omnibuzz" of the highest order
Tate's poems pack an extraordinary amount of activity into a very small space. Quite often a stanza, line or sometimes even a single word (e.g. "omnibuzz", a brilliant coinage from "The Life of Poetry", p. 174) can stand alone as a mini-poem on its own merits.
A first read of a Tate poem can be annoying: the queasy feeling generated by a sequence of these (seemingly unrelated) mini-poems that have a disconcerting way of creating new layers of meaning by forming uneasy alliances with each other.
Like Shakespeare before him (yes, he really is that good--you've got to read this guy!), Tate defies linguistic conventions in order raise, affirm, and expand human experience. Of course no one really knows if several centuries from now people will still be reading Tate, but I'd put money on it.
Rating: - Tate is the best poet in America.
If you want to laugh, if you want to feel good about the
human race, if you want something highly entertaining and
intellectually satisfying to read (it is possible), then
get this book. James Tate is just about the only poet ever
who can write poetry that will actually make you physically
laugh out loud. He is also the kind of poet that even people
who hate poetry can like, just because he's so funny.
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