I regularly scour Netgalley for poetry offerings, since I never get to read enough contemporary poetry. Around two days back, I saw 'Lost and' in the Poetry section but something made my hand hover over the Request button.
This:
This:
Comprised entirely of unaltered reproductions of extraordinary found materials—drawings, charts, questionnaires, compulsively detailed letters, legal documents, jottings, journal entries, stunningly vivid and mysterious photographs—this is a work of sociological and literary daring that defies categorization.
But yeah, I requested it, got approved, read it and now here I am, still unable to come up with a proper review.
This is one weird book. But at the same time, it is terribly intriguing. As the blurb says, it is made up entirely of things found. Photographs, poetry, notes, letters and some things that just can't be classified.
At first, I was unsure of whether I should read those letters, because hey, letters are personal and it's not like Jeff Griffin hunted up the writers and asked for permission to include them. The photographs too, were really personal because most weren't posed. They were candid shots of people being themselves.
P.s. The 'Hell' Storm photo really cracked me up.
Another observation, the general population has really bad spelling and grammar. My inner grammar nazi was having a really hard time restraining herself.
But when I was done with this short book, I wanted more. It was certainly the most refreshing thing I've read in a long, long time.
Still not sure whether this should have been in the poetry section though.
