For me, this was an incredibly disappointing read. I love works set in or drawn around New Orleans, and Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler (centered on Katrina, specifically) is one of my favorite works of contemporary poetry, so I had high hopes for this collection. And yet, most of the poems fell flat for me.

Although some of the poems here are worth admiring for their play with language and history, most of them come across as something more like prose which has been chopped up for effect, or for humor. And, I admit, the tone of many of them just struck me wrong, to where it felt to me like an outsider writing of what he thinks New Orleans to be and come from, so that at many points I almost felt like the voices of the poems were somewhat superficial, or snarky and condescending. Midway through the book, I felt like some of the more contemporary ones were stronger, but then, at the end, I have to admit that the last sequence in the collection left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth for the collection as a whole, and while I could see what the author was perhaps trying to do... I just didn't like it, either in intention or execution.

So, all told, the truth is that I can't recommend this book, and I doubt I'll revisit it. I've enjoyed Sanders work quite a bit in other collections, but here... well, it wasn't for me. ( )