Blowout

March 15, 2013

Open this book, and you plunge into a maelstrom; Duhamel (Ka-Ching) unspools line after long line about a bitter divorce and its aftermath. (Given the rush of words, you believe it when she says, "I used to write poems in one sitting while he slept"). "How It Will End," the ominously titled opening poem, prefigures the break to come as the speaker and her husband watch a couple's quarrel from afar. The next poem announces "I can tell you when my husband [left], / exactly six days later, on September 10th," and on the following page the neighbors are already gossiping--though their attention is soon taken by the larger tragedy of an old woman's suicide. While Duhamel leads us through the grubbiness of the breakup (the plundered bank account, for instance), the tone is more black comedy than self-pity ("I kept wanting my guy/ to take a cue from Madonna's Guy"). Some poems recall teenage sexual angst, mirroring the divorcee's newfound uncertainty; "Recession Commandments" grounds both speaker and reader in financially difficult times. VERDICT A finely drawn if somewhat obsessive portrait for readers who like their poetry on the narrative side.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2013
Making art out of her life has worked very well for Duhamel, whose mostly long-lined, prosy, conversational poems have customarily trod a thin line between laughter and tears. The trouble with her modus operandi catches up with her in this collection, in which autobiographical determination obliges her to write about the end of her marriage, her subsequent depression, but also, fortunately, finding a new love. Like divorce, these poems aren't that funny. But if this collection seems more narrowly focused, it still brims with Duhamel's characteristic fixationslanguage (the British slang of My New Chum ), poor or at least pathetic everyday behavior (losing hundreds between the ATM and her car), pop culture (movies, TV, eBay, pole dancing), unpleasant erotic memories ( Kindergarten Boyfriend, Or Whatever Your Final Destination May Be, Victor )and still presents the miracle of how serious a life embedded in humdrum and commercialized reality can be. In fact, one poem in particular, Worst Case Scenario a solid block of successive personal disastersnegatively apotheosizes just such embeddedness. It takes your breath away.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)