I wrote about this book earlier and did end up finishing it.
The book was thusly organized:
—random half page of text with a dark background (which seemed completely out of context and I thought was separate poems but turned out to be a random mildly related thought by the book’s author about the poem on the next page)
—an interesting poem
—an uninteresting and usually not very enlightening three page ‘analysis of the poem’
I was expecting the poems to get broken down so that I could understand their meaning and see how the poet is using language as craft. There was a little bit of that. A smidge. This was mostly Padraig O Tuama telling personal anecdotes related to the poem.
I started skipping the random half page bits after three or four, and then started skimming the analyses about 1/3 of the book in and then skipping altogether halfway through the book.
I think this book is meant for someone who wants someone else to do the work of relating the poems to real life. I wanted analysis. I didn’t want to hear how it made the author feel. I can already do that on my own.
The poems were great. The book was not for me.