All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost

Poetry professor Miranda Sturgis intimidates and inspires her awestruck graduate students, who go on to lead lives deeply affected by her stature and criticism. Seminar students Roman and Bernard's lives turn out to be vastly divergent--one becomes a famed poet; the other descends into obscurity and poverty. Ramon de Ocampo's performance evokes the frustrations of ambition, loyalty, literary acclaim, and resentment as Chang describes the bittersweet truths inherent in the dichotomy between talent and craft. As de Ocampo expertly differentiates the principals, the subtle quality of Roman's confident tones sharply contrasts with Bernard's more downtrodden sound. Chang's economy of prose has a poetic charm, but by the end, after such sad and intense machinations, one pines for a few lines of sumptuous poetry. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

July 26, 2010
Chang, director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of Hunger and Inheritance, sticks close to home as she follows Roman Morris from his days as an M.F.A. student in the late 1980s to his soaring career as a published poet, tenured professor, and Pulitzer Prize winner. Unfortunately, the book lends credence to the clichés that plague modern poets and the institutions that foster them: wine-fueled workshops are held by candlelight, and Roman's fantasies about his talented, beautiful, and aloof workshop professor lead to a student-teacher affair. Roman's eventual success brings out his resentment of the academy and its favoritism and politics, but this is a work of fiction, and the championing of creative writing programs should not be its cause. In Chang's hands, the world of poetry is a cliché; instead of a novel, she delivers a case study of the modern poet with little bearing in reality and characters as one-dimensional as the premise. While the language is well crafted, readers may be disappointed by the lack of quality storytelling.