Night of the Republic

January 1, 2012

In his latest, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award- and Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author of Happy Hour considers place and things. Characters, at first absent, emerge only from the speaker's close examination of spaces, from the seedy ("Downtown Strip Club") to the abstract ("Cigarette Smoke"). A pervasive sense of "lacking" inhabits this book, as in "Hospital Examination Room" where "The intercom is sleeping, / flashing only the red light of a dream/ of no one entering/ to check on no one waiting." Essentially, Shapiro creates a fresh Republic of poetry where generic things are represented without ceremony yet somehow anew. The funeral home, for instance, is uncovered for what it really is: "an inn/ made to look like a home/ made to look like a mansion/ where no one lives." VERDICT Shapiro nicely balances the dual demands of contemporary poetry: free verse and organic rhythm. He's not afraid of the apt rhyme but never forces it. By stripping generic places to their core, he is able to make them, if not new, certainly interesting once again. [See Prepub Alert, 8/18/11.]--Stephen Morrow, Ohio Univ., Athens

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2012
In his twelfth collection of poetry, Shapiro, who holds an endowed chair at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is concerned with phenomena and places. He finds the most generic location and douses for its most evocative associations. A gas station restroom at night, for example, has a stink and anonymity that seem to evoke the general unease of road tripping. An empty strip club during the day holds the presence of its lonely strippers and their lonelier clientele, inching their chairs too close to the stage and the women's nudity. Stone Church, Hospital Examination Room, Indoor Municipal Pool all receive this schematic treatment. Old buildings are embarrassed by their modernist neighbors, by how nakedly / outside / outside is here. Here the line breaks add emphasis to a resonant idea, the sense amplified by the sounds. In the last third of the book, Shapiro uses a similar approach, formally and aesthetically, to visions from his childhood. Readers might take comfort in Shapiro's visions. The poet is also debuting as a novelist this month with Broadway Baby (2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)