American Melancholy: Poems by Joyce Carol Oates is a captivating and deeply moving collection that will resonate with readers who appreciate introspective and emotionally charged poetry that explores the complexities of the human experience, the struggles of American society, and the power of poetry to capture the essence of our shared humanity.

Joyce Carol Oates can do no wrong. She is a master at her craft and this collection is no different. I fell in love with JCO a long time ago and having a new collection of hers. The way she writes of what it is like to be human and all that entails is always so poignant and perfectly worded. TO be human, to feel, to live. It is a fantastic book of poetry and everyone should read this.

These poems were very thought provoking and the language was beautiful. I gave it four stars because some poems in the collection did not resonate with me, but the ones that did were really impactful. I will definitely be reading more by this author in the future.

I was torn between a four-star rating and a five-star rating because these poems are not easy to read. They hold a mirror up to history, current events, and pop culture and what is reflected is not only not flattering, but slightly perturbing...definitely haunting.

When describing this collection to a friend I described it as the equivalent of rubbernecking. You don't really want to see anything too gruesome, but your neck instinctively turns to see the wreckage.

4.5 stars. I love Oates's poetry collection. First time reading her poems and I really enjoyed them. Review to come.

Due to working as a high school teacher, I am often behind on reviews, but here are my initial thoughts. Book will be included in March 2021 wrap-up.

This book's poetry was like its name - poems with a sad or (obviously) melancholic tone. They were all about death, unfavorable parts of history, etc. There was even a poem about how Edward Hopper's relationship with his wife changed after he started to use her as a model for his paintings.

I was surprised to see poems about the Little Albert psychology experiment (the one about how we gain fears) from the perspective of the young boy and about the Harlow experiment, which had a sympathetic voice towards the monkeys over the scientist. Then again, they showed that it wasn't a good thing for everyone - someone had to suffer for the benefit of others. I was half expecting to read a poem about the Stanford Prison Experiment.

These kinds of themes carried themselves throughout the book, and were not afraid to make you feel down. They were meant to show another side to things that were happening in America throughout the decades. It wasn't as glitzy and happy as people might think, but it wasn't depressing.

There were two poems that felt like they were out of place. It was about incidents that had happened in China, with the same themes. Most likely the narrator or narrators are Asian-American, but it still was surprising.

Overall, these were some good poems that showed the reality of life in America.

a really interesting read! i found the first section "the coming storm" the most interesting & moving. the poems follow a myriad of psychological famous experiments. i also enjoyed the poems "marlon brando...", "this is not a poem", and "hatefugue". overall, i found the collection disconnected. while there was overarching themes, it still seemed like there wasn't a reason all of the poems were in the same book. i also found some poems.... well confusing. while the bloodline poem was beautifully written the one that follows "harvesting skin" read like a black mirror script with an in brackets plot twist at the end. the poem "american sign language" felt off to me but i would defer to d/Deaf and hard of hearing readers & poets on their opinions.

I can hardly believe how deprived I have been to never have known about Joyce Carol Oates’ poetry. Long accustomed to thinking of her as a writer of novels, which of course she is, it never occurred to me that there might be much more to her immense talent and output than prose alone. What a revelation and a joy to have discovered her poetic talent with this volume, American Melancholy. These poems are riveting, and this book is among the best poetry collections I’ve read in a while.

There are three poems near the beginning of the book: Little Albert, Harlowe’s Monkeys, and Obedience, which share a theme of scientific research in a deeply moving and surprisingly disturbing way. I was fascinated. There are also several slightly longer poems here, like Too Young to Marry But Not Too Young to Die, A Dream of Stopped Up Drains, and Bloodline Elegy, which read like short stories, so compelling is the narrative of each. Cat lovers, this reviewer included, are sure to appreciate Jubilate: An Homage in Catterel Verse, a delightful reworking of language in celebration of all things feline and wonderful.

I’d have been delighted if this book had been twice as long. That’s how good these poems are.

Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley.com for the electronic advance review copy.

American Melancholy
Poems
by Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco
Poetry
Pub Date 09 Feb 2021

I am reviewing a copy of American Melancholy through Ecco and Netgalley:



Joyce Carol Oates is a powerful observer of the human heart, mind and soul with her profound social consciousness and is one of the insistent and inspired witnesses of a shared American history.


Oates is best known for her novels and short stories, many of these have become contemporary classics. But Oates has always written poetry faithfully. And this collection of American Melancholy showcases some of her finest work of the last few decades.




American Melancholy covers subjects that are both big and small. Joyce Carol Oates had written this collection in an immediate and engaging style, and touch both the personal as well as the political. The subjects of loss, love as well as memory are investigated, along with the upheavals of our modern age, the reality of our current predicaments, and the ravages of poverty, racism, and social unrest. In this collection Oates masterfully writes characters ranging from a former doctor at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army hospital to Little Albert, a six-month-old infant who took part in a famous study that revealed evidence of classical conditioning in human beings.



I give American Melancholy five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

I hadn't read any poetry by Joyce Carol Oates--in fact I didn't even realize that poetry was part of her wide ranging oeuvre--so "American Melancholy" was a revelation to me: powerful, disturbing, thought-provoking. As its title implies, this is a dark collection, with subjects ranging from medical experimentation ("Little Albert, 1920" was particularly wrenching) to suicide and mortal illness, but the power of these poems lies not in lyricism (they are not particularly lyrical at all, in fact) but in the straightforward, almost clinical way Oates confronts these difficult topics. "Too Young to Marry But Not Too Young to Die," "Doctor Help Me," "Old America Has Come Home to Die," "American Sign Language," and, particularly, "Palliative" were the standouts for me, but the collection as a whole is strong.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

Joyce Carol Oates is a standout in the literary community for good reason. Her writing is filled with depth and feeling that is tied to her strong imagery. This collection of poetry is no different, but it is not for the faint of heart. American MELANCHOLY, indeed. I kept waiting for there to be some lightness in this collection, but it was heaviness multiplied. With topics including psychological experiments, animal abuse, suicide, and even the terrible person that was Marlon Brando, the collection leaves plenty to think about, but no one should revel in that depth of darkness. Recommended with reservations.

Unfortunately this was not for me. I can’t bring myself to give it 1 star because I liked a few lines but it left me with no emotional takeaway. The repetition of lines like “because...” in several poems felt meaningless and I think it could have done without them. Subject matter felt confused and disorienting without any really message behind it. I’d still be interested in reading some of her novels but this form of poetry didn’t work for me at all. Let’s say 1.5 stars for this one.

This collection ended up being only okay. Poetry is so subjective and this style of poetry isn't generally my style. Some poems really stuck out to me and some just didn't do it for me. But many people I'm sure will connect with these poems.

Not for me - not very creative or thought-provoking, and I really could've done without the fat-shaming in the Brando poem.

This was far too much like prose and not enough like poetry for me, and the subject matter was almost too intense at times. I guess I should have assumed from the word melancholy in the title, but I had trouble forcing myself to read some of the poems.

’...it is a slew of words in search of a container… a cooing of vowels like doves.’

This is a memorable collection of poems by Joyce Carol Oates that is separated into four sections:
THE COMING STORM
THE FIRST ROOM
AMERICAN MELANCHOLY
And
THIS IS THE TIME FOR WHICH WE HAVE BEEN WAITING

The first collection, THE COMING STORM includes poems with themes based on our collective past history, but these aren’t all poems that rhyme or necessarily have a rhythm that most people associate with poetry. Of this section, the poem that impacted me the most was OBEDIENCE: 1962

The second collection, THE FIRST ROOM starts out with a poem by the same name THE FIRST ROOM which I really loved, followed by THIS IS NOT A POEM which I also loved, and THE MERCY, whose final lines read:

'The stroke
that wipes out memory
is another word for mercy.'

Some of these narrative poems read more like a very short story, a message, some more like a commentary.

The third collection, AMERICAN MELANCHOLY begins with TO
MARLON BRANDO IN HELL, a strangely beautiful, if disturbing, take on the negative, destructive side of fame, as well as our willingness, or lack of willingness to offer forgiveness.

The fourth and final collection, THIS IS THE TIME FOR WHICH WE WERE WAITING the only poem was heartbreakingly real and my personal favourite: PALLIATIVE

Some of these poems cover some of history’s psychological experiments, man’s inhumanity to man, where others are on other disturbing topics, serving as warnings from the past, as well as a somewhat broad range of other topics. There’s a tangible sense of anger or indignation in some, and a sense of awe or love, or even reverence for the course of life, death and sorrow in others.

While this won’t appeal to everyone, and readers will love some of these poems more than others, I really appreciated all, and found many of these to be hauntingly beautiful.


Pub Date: 09 Feb 2021

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Ecco

A well-written collection of poetry that pays tribute to some of my favorite poets, such as Billy Collins and William Carlos Williams. Oates is a master of language, so it should be no surprise that her poetry is tight and compelling. I particularly thought the poem about Marlon Brando (now in hell) was powerful.

I have always loved everything Joyce Carol Oates has written, and her poetry is as remarkable as her novels and short stories.

Joyce Carol Oates in the first few poems of her new collection, "American Melancholy," tackles a trio 0f historical psychological experiments that involved how fear can be conditioned in children (Little Albert experiment), the impact of maternal separation on monkey's cognitive and emotional development (Harlow's Monkey experiment) and how individuals are willing to inflict pain on others under the auspices of authority figures (Milligram experiment) that culminates in this third poem with Oates addressing "you", and forces us to confront the following, ""Because the Holocaust was not possible without/following orders. Because the Holocaust was not/possible without continuing to the end./ Because the Holocaust was not possible without you." At the end of the poem she concludes, "Not your fault. Following orders. Continue to the end. You will not be blamed." What makes the impact of these poems so powerful is that Oates uses very simple diction and a very linear thought process like rudimentary philosophy, "If A=B, B=C, then A=C" And yet the message here is that this is faulty logic. Because what seems simple and direct can have profound ramifications if we just blindly follow this simplistic reasoning--because someone with a white coat in a position of authority told me I had to administer shocks to subjects I was just doing what I was told (Milligram experiment). I think these 3 poems should have started the collection rather than a brief poem about a man reading "The Nation," which doesn't pack the emotional wallop that these 3 poems do early in the collection.

Oates' strength in these poems can be attributed to her expertise as one of our most prolific fiction writers. She creates vivid scenes with brief descriptions that capture salient insights of the characters that populate her poems ("First job was file clerk at Trinity Trust. Wasted three/years of her young life waiting/for R.B. to leave his wife and wouldn't you think a / smart girl like her would know better?" (Edward Hooper's "Eleven A.M.," 1926). Although effective in inviting the reader to follow the poem's narrative, there are very few lines/stanzas that are memorable poetic diction. Although vivid, the long narrative lines don't dazzle in the way some of our most talented poets almost beg us to remember a brilliant line or stanza. It's not that all of these poems are several page narratives. In fact, the second section of her book has many short poems that attempt to do what I mentioned above. The best one (in my opinion) is a William Carlos Williams derivative of "The Red Wheelbarrow," where she writes in "The Mercy," "So much depends upon/forgetting much/for our/earliest/yearnings never abandon us./ The stroke/that wipes out memory/is another word for mercy."

Overall this collection is memorable for its voice rather than necessarily its technique and I appreciated Oates' direct, non-pandering style that calls out how we contribute as a society to our "American Melancholy."

This is the fourth publication this year alone that I've reviewed of the work of Joyce Carol Oates, but the very first book of her poetry I've read. Each of the other books was different in style from the others (a short story collection, a 4-part novella compilation, an 800-page masterwork novel). And these poems could only have been written by her. Almost all have been previously published in journals and respected periodicals, and her choice of material reflects her intrigue of and rage against what she perceives as injustice and what damage can be wielded from one human being to another, sometimes under the cloak of "doing good" through scientific experiment. I was particularly wowed by her insight into the life and experience of Marlon Brando and his wasting of his gifts. Again, I wonder, does she ever sleep?