One might think that a collection beginning with a poem called "Writing Off Argentina" can only go downhill, but such is not the case in this sustained, terrific debut from Slate, who combines a great novelist's merciless eye for class stratification with a practiced poet's feel for judicious detail, emotional valences and how to power a line. The 50-something COO of a biotech firm outside of Boston, Slate writes on the scale of the Wall Street Journal
, making clear at every turn how the lives and feelings we call our own extend forward and backward into larger political and economic systems and lives of people one doesn't know. He finds those systems often as corrupt and brutalizing on the top (where most of the poems take place) as they are at the bottom: "First, understanding the loss. Then,// understanding there's nothing to be done./ I understand and I love my odorous coat// and Esteban made me a jacket as well/ at a price not to be believed." Slate's closest poetic analogue is probably Frederick Seidel, but Slate's ironies are less nihilistic, as well as simultaneously more bemused and engaged. For smart, snarky, sad and elegantly crafted commentary on global capital, its history and its personality, look no further. (Apr. 7)
