Library Journal
It is disappointing that perhaps the best dramatist of American slang should offer such stilted poetic lines as these: ''My friends, and I can not blame them,/ have tired of my woes./ How shall I use this solitude/ But in discovery?'' Mamet's poems are intelligent, but technically awkward, rife with sentence fragments, easy rhymes, and a mannered tone that recalls T.S. Eliot: ''The beneficent/ Perusal of death,/ The Untaught/ Horror of the Philistine,/ The vacant musings/ Of a vacant mind.'' In a few poems, the writer awakens to the challenge: ''The Goshawk'' is a valiant attempt at a sonnet, and ''Packing,'' the only dramatic monolog in the book, has an intriguing voice. Of interest to Mamet fans as a gloss to his career as a playwright, but not recommended for general poetry collections.-- Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Bal lantine Law Lib., New York