The Violence

Poetry. Ethan Paquin’s third book is a sprawling meditation touching on the loss of love and commitment, the painfulness of memory, and the disorientation as well as the consolations of travel. The poems of THE VIOLENCE contain a rawness of emotion and clarity of feeling rare among writers of Paquin’s generation. Where form plays a part, it is likely to be exploded: the poet’s page becomes more of a canvas than a neutral vehicle. THE VIOLENCE is a compact of determining forces both poet and language must survive, whether they be fact of a day’s events or else lodged in the very fabric of language itself. It is Ethan Paquin’s power that he can admit these furies and survive them–Robert Creeley.