Happiness: A Novel in Verse

Maybe we just live in clunky times...and poetry embodying ideas as Happiness does just isn't every phillistine's cup of tea, I'd guess. Sorry, but I found that my own reading of Happiness offered me a compellingly open set of visions for possible human futures, along with fiercely unsparing critiques of revolution, cultural, political, and metaphysical. We need poetry, these days, to dialogue with perennial values beyond the relativities of sensuality and The Self - that's Mr. Pollack's classical edge. But he's also an Outsider, a beat revolutionary, I imagine, not so much in retirement as in tactical retreat. This isn't an easy poem - book length narrative poems sort of can't be - but its rewards are, well, revolutionary...

Clunky and inept; I'm surprised that this work was hyped. Even the Kirkus commercial review presented here is honest about it....

In Happiness, as well as in his past work, Pollack manages to do the virtually impossible: create something which is exciting, entertaining as well as intellectually stimulating as well as staggering. Reading Happiness excited me tremendously. The reader can approach it from any one of a number of different directions and always hit the target dead on. A very important book.