The Sublime

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this collection, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the Vassar Miller Prize, Holden writes in a plain, unadorned voice about the real world of divorce, death, sickness and drudgery. His poems contain few metaphors, and those he does use are firmly anchored in the everyday. "The Model Train" is a long poem about divorce: "We began systematically/ to take apart our life, like an HO-gauge/ model train set." A determined realism, grounded in the ordinary, gives Holden's work a direct, unpretentious tone that suits his often grim subject matter well. For Holden, larger social forces batter individual lives; this collection focuses on events both global and personal, moving from the nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island to his teaching his son to drive a car or taking a friend's father to the hospital. In "Gulf: January 17, 1991," a couple chooses to make love rather than watch the televised carnage of the Gulf War. At its best, Holden's plainspoken poetry celebrates such small moments of personal victory. (Sept.)