3/5 stars

What's it about? An utterly useless question for a book entitled Poems.

How’d I find it? I once came across a tidbit from Mazer’s poem “The Double” in some article or essay now forgotten and became an instant fan.

Who will enjoy this book? Mazer’s work reminds me of Peter Gizzi’s and Chris Tonelli’s, poets you should explore if you like what you read here.

What stood out? Ben Mazer possesses such a strange, self-assured style that commands the page without apology. Poems contains rhyme, ekphrasis, elegies, and—why not—a ten-page piece in all caps. The language is often so unexpected that one has to reread, try another poem, then come back, and isn’t that what we all want from good poetry? Lines you can sink your teeth into?

Which line made me feel something? The poem “Stieglitz” (a riff on the 1893 photograph Winter — Fifth Avenue) dazzled me, but since it’s too short to spare an excerpt, I leave you with this line from “The Double,” which never fails to knock me on my tush: “The white picket fence is and always has been intense.”