Thank You, Michelangelo

Rose Mary Prosen

I read Prosen's Apples around this time last year, and was decidedly more impressed with it than I had expected to be. Thus, when I happened upon this one, it was a must-buy. Its strengths and weaknesses in relation to Apples are different, but they're about the same amounts in the same ratios.

Michelangelo is a cycle of linked poems about the narrator's affair and breakup with a married man split into five sections (though the sections aren't obviously named, one can't help but think of the Five Stages of Grief). Much of what made Apples shine is apparent here; Prosen has a good eye for detail and can draw a metaphor with the best of them. What's missing is in no small part those metaphors across poems that make for a really good cycle; everything in the collection stands, as it were, a little too far alone. There are also a few places where Prosen slips into tell-mode rather than show-mode and a couple of drops into sentimentality, but the latter, at least, is to be expected in a book such as this.

That said, the fact that this is three times the length of Apples is actually a good thing. Getting a look at a larger cross-section of Prosen's work better shows off the strength of it, and the overall experience of the book is enjoyable. Don't let the slips stop you from picking it up, if you come across it.