Feeling flat

A Bag of Hands by Mather Schneider
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a Runner-Up collection for the 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize and so many must appreciated the "talky' style of poetry contained herein:

It's 5 a.m.
and I get the cab warmed up.
I drive to McDonald's in the dark
where Josie is already working
the breakfast shift.
She gives me a coffee and a smile.
This is how we met
3 years ago.

Most of the poems go this way. The opening poem, "Hot Iron," and the closing one, "Chasing the Green Card," both work a little more for me. But I just cannot appreciate this sort of poetry. Billy Collins does it better. It must be me--so many editors do appreciate and publish poems of this sort. But this collection left me flat.


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