MYSTIFIED AT WHY I took so long to pick this up--it came out in 2012, and I had liked Tea, Cocktails, and Chronic--well, better late than never, and it's excellent. In a different vein from his earlier work--more formal (quite a few sonnets in the first section), more elegant, more mandarin perhaps...I kept thinking of Auden and Merrill.
The first part, "Useless Landscape," seems to be be looking more at the present, the second, "A Guide for Boys," to be more based on memory. They differ a bit in voice, too, with the second section a little closer in tone to Powell's previous books, but both parts seem to be contemplating the Central Valley, geographically near but culturally distant from the earlier work's center of gravity in San Francisco.
Glad I finally got around to this--shows Powell has a lot more range than I had suspected. Greatest Living American Poet? He's in the hunt.
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