I liked the cover; I liked the title. But it seems I thought it would be about something else.
Sometimes I ask myself if it's just me.

I looked up Mark Irwin and found out he's a professor who teaches poetry. I can't help but feel that it shows.
Some of these poems sound to me like something I've already heard. Again, and again and again.
They follow the same formula as a million other poems by poets that came out the last twenty years - and I've already read them. Chasing the rhythm of modern poetry and poems, with embellishments that are there when there isn't any message to find. I read them and by the end I'm like "so what was that about?". So I read them again and I make sense of the poems, I understand English, I know syntax and I have a good vocabulary. But, again, what was that about?

That said, there were some poems I found "true". In the sense that they felt like something, and not a copy of something; most of them were about some kind of loss - be it family, culture or the old world in its natural state [Blue, Red; Family; Was Into Space; English; Hover; Joyful Orphan].

I always find myself glad to have enjoyed even just a little component in a book. I may not have determined the whole book to be "good" in itself, but those good parts make the read worth it by the end.

Joyful Orphan
By Mark Irwin
University of Nevada Press
Publication date: 2/7/23
Poetry

Joyful Orphan is a collection of poems by Mark Irwin. I feel like we are joyfully orphans of the world and ourselves because of how engrossed we are with technology and other nonsense going on in the world.

Some issues that are touched on here: the pandemic, war, technology, the ways in which we are ruining the planet, drugs, and borders.

The poetry wasn’t really for me, but I can see that what the writer has to say is important, relevant, and universal.

Thanks to NetGalley, University of Nevada Press, and Mark Irwin for the opportunity to read and review this work.