After several attempts at starting it, I realized it wasn't for me. The idea behind it is great, but I found the writing style disjointed and hard to follow.

Reads like the author is barely hanging on before succumbing to a midlife breakdown.

I received a free e-galley from netgalley.com.

I really wanted to like this book and I tried several times, but it did not grab nor hold my attention. Maybe it's just me?

I really wanted to like "Drinks with Dead Poets" by Glyn Maxwell, however I couldn't get used to the way it was written. I understand that the narrator isn't aware of where he is or how he got there but, I felt it could have been less disjointed and still kept to the plot.

This is an odd book to try to get into, but maybe it's just not for me. I wanted to enjoy meeting dead poets and idols, but I found myself dozing off instead of reading. I didn't finish.

This is a hard book to review. Even though its cover clearly states it is a novel, its "author" is the main character. Glyn Maxwell has been hired to teach a poetry elective and the book reads like a series of seminars on the lives of the poets listed on its cover. Though the promise is what drew me in, the clever literary allusions and the interesting "lectures" is what kept me turning the pages.

"Drinks with Dead Poets" gets three stars because the premise is soo tantalizing. I only wish the application of that premise lived up to the promise. I tried and tried, but could not get through. However, I have that feeling that I might return to have a drink with the dead poets and enjoy it more, even though the device of calling the main character after the author always smacks of sit-com and serves no purpose.

Drinks with Dead Poets is a wonderfully eccentric book that defies categorization. Poet and teacher Glyn Maxwell is scheduled to teach a poetry class on a campus in a village that he doesn't recognize and can't remember coming to. Every Thursday until the end of term, he awakens in the same room in the same village to teach his class, each featuring a different poet's work. It so happens that the poets whose work Maxwell is teaching are all dead, and Student Services has booked them as visiting poets for Maxwell's classes.

Everything the poets say during their visits is taken verbatim from historical records--a fine conceit that gives context to their poetry and brings them, literally, to life. Maxwell (yes, he's not only the book's protagonist but it's author too) brings a great sense of fun to his subject. He knows academia well, too, inventing an idiosyncratic array of students, teachers, and assorted bureaucrats whose behavior is both amusing and on the mark.

Drinks with Dead Poets is also a brilliant commentary on understanding poetry: how it works and how best to enjoy it. Using examples from the "visiting poets'" work, these are its most spirited, enjoyable, and and instructive parts. It's a book that I can see re-visiting more than once.

I found the whole thing kind of hokey and not seamless. IMO I think this whole reanimated poets/authors thing only works in children's lit. There was so little time spent in these poets that they could be nothing more than stock figures / derivative stereotypes of themselves. Also, that it was a dream the whole time felt like he just gave up in the end with the plot. Ehhh.

This was an ok read for me. I'm not the biggest poetry fan in the world but the premise of a professor meeting his idols was interesting. The professor, named after the author, Glyn Maxwell, meets Keats walking through the village and asks him to lecture to his class. This is the beginning. Professor Maxwell isn't sure how he came to be teaching in this setting but he seems happy. The author is a prolific writer and has several books of poetry.

Drinks with Dead Poets: The Autumn Term
by Glyn Maxwell
108416
Nancy Cunningham's review May 27, 2017 · edit
really liked it
bookshelves: to-read, quirky, netgalley

Glyn Maxwell has written a quirky and challenging book that presents itself as a novel, but might more accurately be read as a guide to reading and understanding poetry. Maxwell's principal character
greets the reader in a confused state: he unsure of where he is, or how he landed there, but he is leading a rather unorthodox (and unofficial) college class in poetry and his students experience a series of notable guests from Keats to Whitman to the Brownings and Poe.

The magic of this book is not that the guests are all notable dead poets, but it is in how each of Maxwell's chapters prepares the reader for what to listen for in each poet's work. We start to understand how (and why) a poet uses meter. We gain an understanding of how an idea is presented in a poem. And, we start to think about how the form and language influences what we hear and how we feel about the words.

I would love to be a student of Glyn Maxwell's, but it would be equally exciting to be teaching poetry using this book as a text. This is a quirky and challenging novel (and one that is rather slow to pick up steam), but it is a brilliant guide to understanding and appreciating poetry. The more I read, the more enthusiastic I became. It is, perhaps, a book that requires re-reading. I read it quickly to understand what was happening (and/or see IF anything was going to happen that would "clear the haze" created by the author) . Now, I can return to the book at my leisure, perhaps reading one author at a time to gain a better appreciation of them and their work.

NetGalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't really care for this book, too convoluted the lectures by the authors and poets were the most interesting parts of the book.