Critical Essay | Critical Review by Daniel L. Guillory

Critical Review by Daniel L. Guillory

SOURCE: A review of The Book of Nods, in Library Journal, Vol. 111, No. 7, April 15, 1986, p. 84.

In the following brief review, Guillory praises Carroll's ability to shock readers with incongruous images in The Book of Nods.

Carroll’s prose poems (or “nods”) are like verbal equivalents of Dali’s paintings: a man vomits the hands of a clock (in “Silent Money”) and a cat jumps into a mirror (in “Watching the Schoolyard”). But these incongruities quickly lose their shock value, and Carroll sometimes fails to create a meaningful context for his images. More successful are his conventional lyric poems. In “A Night Outing,” for example, the poet admires “the way still grey water / Throws the moon / … right back at itself.” “New York Variations” and “California Variations” amount to interlocking meditations on urban landscapes “where diesel trains pass at noon every day.” The Book of Nods...
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