World's Tallest Disaster: Poems

This voice holds no punch. There is a boldness with the brains and sheer attitude to back it up. Besides a near-Victorian stateliness to the line, there is a very contemporary feel to the comfort in the language. These poems are hip and hot and smart and often, painful. But yes, as a previous reviewer states: good pain. Better yet, Marvin has a new collection on the way.

Whether they know it or not, people want to read poems that aren't merely well-crafted, or smart, or humorous, or self-aware, or imagistic, or aware of the tragedy in our lives, or aware of the "limitations of language" (whatever that means). People settle for those things because they have grown to expect only those things from poetry ... to tolerate a certain well-mannered lifelessness. But what people really want, and need, is to read poems that are human. Poems (like the ones in this book) that are funny, angry, melodramatic, precise, contradictory, and, above all, interesting ... precisely all the things we want from, and expect in, an exceptional, complicated human being responding to life and the people in it. The poems in this book are particularly interesting, and moving, because they are not only so unafraid in their humor, ambition, precision, visuality and utterly self-aware melodrama to be fully human, but are also incredibly well-crafted, jeweled even (which is why criticizing the author of this book for having studied fiction -- a fact one would never know from the poems -- seems especially silly, and motivated by pure jealousy and pique). When I read this startling book (all the more startling for the fact that it is a first effort), I think of Auden, and Plath, masters of their craft who filled their finely-honed poems with the most contemporary objects and feelings. The poems in World's Tallest Disaster settle for nothing less. Read this book because it's more like the most intense, painful and rewarding aspects of life than most contemporary poetry; because the poems are also well-made objects which one can both admire and be pleased to be inside of; and because it's the first effort of a real poet who is going to be here doing this very important work for us for a long time to come.

The poems in The World's Tallest Disaster seem to me very often word by word perfect, poems that knocked the breath out of me a little. In the spirit of Plath and Larkin, the poems can be caustic, funny, and beautiful (and yeah even cruel) all at the same time. They bring to life a consistent personality behind the words, even though, as Pinsky states in the introduction, the poems don't belong to any one particular school. The voice or persona (or whatever you want to call it) is blunt and trustworthy with an eloquent and disarming honesty. The language is always there. It's the best collection I've read in years.

I first encountered Cate Marvin in my role as a poetry editor when a poem titled "Cigarillo" landed on my desk. I had never heard of Cate Marvin, never seen anything written by her. Within a minute of reading that poem, I knew I would be reading her work for the rest of my life. The power and accuracy of detail, the ability to transform details into an emotional landscape, the way in which mood can be modulated at the hands of a craftsman--these things told me that this poem was no fluke, that I was reading a poet of immense skill. Since then, I have published Marvin's work several times, and always I am impressed not only by her strengths but by the way in which she already has a very recognizable style. These poems are rich, stringent, exacting things, and I am grateful to Cate Marvin for them. She is one of the leading poets of her generation. If you care about poetry, you must read this book. --C. Dale Young, Poetry Editor for NEW ENGLAND REVIEW