Booknote: Practice on Mountains

David Bartone, Practice on Mountains. Boise, ID: Ahsahta Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-934103-47-0.

This book did not impress me much. It is described as a book of self-searching that is not narcissistic. I actually found it to be the exact opposite as the author consistently refers to himself and his love pains. It is also described as having lyric discursiveness, but I found the free verse a bit mundane, going all over the place, and to be honest, it did get a bit boring after a while.

The book back cover tells us the book won the Sawtooth Poetry Award in 2013. I had to look that up because it did not ring any bells in terms of being a known award outside of fancy literary circles. Turns out it is a small award of $1500 given to a poetry book out of Ahsahta Press, based at Boise State University.

In the end, I found the book to be barely OK, which is why I gave it two stars, but I will say that I have read much better poetry by other writers. This book contains the kind of poetry your high end literary friends or your literature professors might pick to read. I do not see this as a book for most common readers. It's not hard to read or such. It's just not terribly interesting.

So, in the end, 2 out of 5 stars, but barely. I borrowed this one from my local public library.