James Reiss
Reviews
Riff on Six
"The selected poems are from Reiss's five volumes of published poetry from 1974 to 2003.
The new poems are satirical poems on the war in Iraq after 9/11with the title 'A Child's Garden of Evil.'
In these, the line 'Now that Bush has allied us with lies' rhymes with the following one, '
About how Saddam and bad guys / [Will unleash dogs of hell]. . . .' Another satire begins, 'Off we go into
the wildest blunder [since Vietnam]. . . .' Most readers will find this last section of 20 or so satires
most engaging for being topical and honing in on the deceptions, overblown expectations, and stubborn
realities relating to the war. No matter what Reiss's subject, his poems have a crispness of language
from the quick pace of short words, most only one or two syllables. This simple, no-nonsense placement
of words gives the poems a jewel-like brightness."
-Small Press Book Review
The Breathers
In Reiss, poems are
laid in drawers, folded in books; memories are like pictures cut out of
magazines....Pursued by the same phantoms, which reappear on the telephone,
in sequential rooms, in snapshots, in slides, Reiss writes them down in
an accomplished plain style, with a momentum carrying whole poems along
on the humming acceleration of a single sentence."
--Helen Vendler, The New York Times Book Review
Express
Reiss writes
with urgency and zing. He travels though time and distance, using brand
names and the heroes of pop culture as touchstones of American life: Uneeda
Biscuits, Groucho Marx, Jay Silverheels, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Life
Savers....There isn't a dull page in the book."
--Library Journal
The Parable of Fire
"From the dark ruminations of 'Castrati in Caesar's Court'. . .and 'Memorial Quilt, Central Park'. . .
to the hard-boiled nostalgia of 'Mexico'... Reiss imagines himself into situations rich with the bitterness
of loss or deprivation. The volume concludes on a positive note, however, with one of Reiss's best poems,
'Eclipse the Dark/ My Fiftieth Birthday: July 11, 1941,' in which his fear of aging and death is transformed
into a celebration of 'the light which surrounds us / and comes from within us'-a conclusion that confirms
the close attention Reiss pays the world in even the collection's darkest explorations."
-Publishers Weekly
Ten Thousand Good Mornings
"Critics of Reiss's three previous volumes have referred to his plain style, which certainly
continues here, but Reiss can deploy rhyme, alliteration, assonance, the caesura, and a variety of poetic
forms, from couplets to concrete, just for the fun of it, and with a skill that, more often than not, works
for the poems rather than against them. . . . Reiss is capable of a surprising awkwardness and an equally
surprising lyricism, all in the course of a single poem, almost in a single breath, as in 'Lily':
'Saw how, twice-dappled
with dristle & beauty marks, she tilted a bit in her vase
toward my pencil as if she could lift it to write
& tell me the checkered tall story of all things in bloom.
Saw two of her petals were nibbled-by a rabbit? a fawn?'""
-Laurel Blossom, American Book Review