Places

By Scott C. Holstad

Subjects: contemplation, anger, dystopian futures, street life, social activism, visions, moral outrage, introspection, confessional poetry, oppression, violence, social dysfunction, Pulitzer, beat, travel, poetry, beat poetry

Description: Scott Holstad is a hardworking poet whose [new] book has just been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry... Holstad's poems are predominantly voice driven -- and that voice is often filled with the anger of moral outrage. Poems such as "let's give ourselves a round," "this is what we are" and "just for kicks" express the poet's disgust with his fellow American's penchant for mindless violence and excess. But Holstad's poems are just plain angry. In the poem "smoking," the poet, having recently quit after ten years expresses a desire to "file [his] teeth / on your forehead." Places also announces some new directions for Holstad's work -- some poems reveal a quieter, more contemplative aspect of his voice... But this is not to say that Holstad has gone soft--not by any stretch of the imagination. These poems provide relief from a vision of the world which might otherwise prove too bleak for most readers... Ultimately, for Holstad, as for Bukowski, "The poem is the / crutch, the gun, the / good drink." Need I say more? -- GP Lainsbury, VOX, University of Calgary, 1996