I was really looking forward to this collection because it was an interesting premise. Unfortunately, the prose was too fragmented for my taste.

The first part is really just a play with words, which I don't mind but skimmed through because I'm reading on a MacBook screen and it's hard for me to really sink into it like that and enjoy it.

I especially like: The Insipid Ride of Melsina: A Narrative; Congruent; Citable Gestures; Blue Notes; Punch Drunk; Sundrift Moonswell.

I like it but I suspect it reads better in print. I really like the cover.

Lances All Alike
by Suzanne Zelazo
Coach House Books
Poetry
Pub Date 05 Apr 2018
I am reviewing a copy of Lances All Alike through Coach House Books and Netgalley:
Despite the fact there is no proof that modernist poet painters Mina Loy and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven ever became friends with one another they did have friends in common, Susan Zelazo uses lines of poetry to create imagined conversations between the two women.
This book allows you to get a glimpse at what a conversation between these two modernist poet painters and women would be like, through the poems Suzanne Zelazo put together.
I give Lances Are All Alike five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!

Not quite my type of poetry. I'm sure there is an audience out there for it though.

Excision 1 was not enjoyable for me, and I nearly stopped reading. It read like Lorem Ipsum-esque word soup, but maybe I am missing something in my understanding of it. I started Excision 2, and suddenly I was reading poetry with beautiful flow. The poems became much more accessible and imaginative in the following excisions. The difference between quality was startling. I ended up having mixed feelings, but overall I would recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a free copy of this ebook.

Lances All Alike by Suzanne Zelazo is a collection of modern poetry. Zelazo is a writer, editor, educator, and publisher in the visual and literary arts, as well as in sport. She holds a Ph.D. in English with a specialty in female modernism and avant-garde poetry and performance.

Zelazo borrows for her creation. Each section is prefaced with a quote and the poems that follow in some manner reflect that quote back to the reader. I was a bit confused at the start (The notes and explanation are at the end of the book) but I caught on by the second section. The first section all I could think of was Gertrude Stein, and in my thoughts of Stein, the next poem I read was titled "Tiny Buttons:"

Crushed moon
sinuous consciousness
congealed fantasia

This excerpt will give the reader an idea of what the poetry is like throughout the collection. It is very much in the modernist style. In fact, all the reference quotes also are from modernists. Section two starts with a quote from Ezra Pound to James Joyce and proceeds to have an Irish tone. The third section is titled "Sutured Portraits." The final section contains a quote from Dewy Dell from the one Faulkner novel I have read As I Lay Dying. I was able to latch on to the poems and follow. Without known the novel, I would have been lost as I was in the first section.

The notes at the end do a great deal to explain the purpose of this collection. Mina Loy and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven were contemporaries that never met or collaborated although they had several common friends including Djuna Barnes who I have read and piqued my interest in this collection. The non-relationship between Loy and Freytag-Loringhoven is used to set the work in motion with an imagined conversation, in the modernist style. Unless the reader is familiar with and or an admirer of modernist poetry, this will be a difficult read. My limited knowledge, but a great appreciation of modernist writers and my limited ability to digest modernist poetry made this a challenging, but rewarding read. For myself, I was able to walk away a bit more knowledgeable and more motivated to dive back into modernist poetry.



Available April 24, 2018

Maybe I needed more context for this, but I wasn't sure what I was reading or how it worked with the story idea. DNF.