Radio, Radio: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets) - Softcover

"These bodies are not/ our bodies but we pull them close to stall the shudder," Doyle proclaims at the end of "The Miscarriage." And it is these words that best summarize Doyle's debut volume, winner of the prestigious Walt Whitman Award from the POETRY Society of America for a first book of POETRY. Doyle's observation is intense and often reduced to molecules, resulting in a verse that despite its occasionally surreal nature is strongest when close to home. Doyle replaces cultural references with witty, sometimes biting, and often veiled snapshots of a generic, subordinated experience: "our ankles matched/ electric fence tattoos." As this suggests, there are images straight out of the superhero comic books. And who else could write a sestina in which "met" becomes "Kismet" and "comet" or "again" becomes "Reagan?" Everything here is contemporary, with references to injection-molded plastics and a poem dedicated to the Sony Robotdog. Although uneven as a whole, this is one of the more original POETRY books of late and definitely worth reading. Rochelle Ratner, New York
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