If You Call This Cry a Song

Hayden Carruth

This collection, written over the course of thirty years, contains material published in magazines and then, for all intents and purposes, forgotten about. Carruth tells us in the introduction that when he stumbled upon it he recognized some old favorites, and thus the birth of this collection.

As seen in The Bird/Poem Book, Carruth is a far better writer than he is a selector of poetry. When he is good, he is very very good, and many of the poems here reflect Carruth doing what he does best. Some of them, on the other hand, are quite simply bombs. Too much politics, not enough poetry, the epidemic that has swept the world since Robert Service and likely before. The best material here is well worth reading, though, and very enjoyable.