In a recent review by Bucknell University's West Branch Wired, Ira Sadoff's True Faith is used as an example in a bold resistance against the "perceived 'smallness' of contemporary American poetry," and the idea of contemporary "kitchen-window poets" who "simply gaze out their kitchen windows and write what they see." Grouped together with several other elite poets and compared with the "old gods" of poetry, Sadoff is acknowledged as a poet writing "ambitious" poetry, "poems that visibly grapple with difficult subjects, and that often do so with language that cuts roughly to the bone."
Reviewer Matthew Ladd finds the poems in Sadoff's True Faith to "bear the telltale marks of the New York School," as he, like Auden in some cases, cares far more about "odd little details," than main events. Ladd classifies Sadoff not only as a "younger contemporary of the movement," but also among the school's "literary legends," quoting this poem from the new collection:
"For Beauty"
But there's my father coming to tuck me in—
I'm dreaming now—to beg forgiveness
long after he's dead. My forehead's blessed.
Imagination's a great gift: you can make it small,
call it escapist, transcendent, fancy, and sometimes
it walks away from the accident; it might haul you off
to a lush little meadow, or the muddy pond
where yaks dip their tongues in the gatorless water
where you can wash off the scratches and bruises.
"The serene, antediluvian pastoral of that third stanza is wonderfully conjured, and provides what is possibly the fullest and least compromised portrait of joy in this world that True Faith is willing to offer. It may be a joy that only exists in the mind—those scratches and bruises will still be there, fresh as ever, when Sadoff's dreaming speaker wakes—but nonetheless one is left with the distinct impression that the author remains a true believer in the mind's potentialities, even if its creations tend to disappoint."
Read the full review, "The Old Gods Still Live: Five New Books," here.
Get your copy of True Faith, today.
Ira Sadoff (True Faith) is a 'literary legend'
In a recent review by Bucknell University's West Branch Wired, Ira Sadoff's True Faith is used as an example in a bold resistance against the "perceived 'smallness' of contemporary American poetry," and the idea of contemporary "kitchen-window poets" who "simply gaze out their kitchen windows and write what they see." Grouped together with several other elite poets and compared with the "old gods" of poetry, Sadoff is acknowledged as a poet writing "ambitious" poetry, "poems that visibly grapple with difficult subjects, and that often do so with language that cuts roughly to the bone."
Reviewer Matthew Ladd finds the poems in Sadoff's True Faith to "bear the telltale marks of the New York School," as he, like Auden in some cases, cares far more about "odd little details," than main events. Ladd classifies Sadoff not only as a "younger contemporary of the movement," but also among the school's "literary legends," quoting this poem from the new collection:
"For Beauty"
But there's my father coming to tuck me in—
I'm dreaming now—to beg forgiveness
long after he's dead. My forehead's blessed.
Imagination's a great gift: you can make it small,
call it escapist, transcendent, fancy, and sometimes
it walks away from the accident; it might haul you off
to a lush little meadow, or the muddy pond
where yaks dip their tongues in the gatorless water
where you can wash off the scratches and bruises.
"The serene, antediluvian pastoral of that third stanza is wonderfully conjured, and provides what is possibly the fullest and least compromised portrait of joy in this world that True Faith is willing to offer. It may be a joy that only exists in the mind—those scratches and bruises will still be there, fresh as ever, when Sadoff's dreaming speaker wakes—but nonetheless one is left with the distinct impression that the author remains a true believer in the mind's potentialities, even if its creations tend to disappoint."
Read the full review, "The Old Gods Still Live: Five New Books," here.
Get your copy of True Faith, today.
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