Ursus on T&T

The enigmatic Dr. Ursus has an informal response to the Poetry Weekend and Track & Trace on his blog:

I personally think the Seth illustrations are straight outta Calvin and Hobbes, I kept looking for a Transmogrifier and Calvin clones. I don’t want to share my book with anyone; and Zach’s book is polluted by “Decorated By Seth” prominently displayed on the cover. I’m sure Zach would agree that it’s the poetry that matters, and I think that’s where I’ll dwell: his first book, Unsettled, was hobbled by its abrasively true blue collar cred, its insistence on the worth of the working man. But Track and Trace is transcendent: it’s got sonnetry, it’s got acrostics, even a Purdy imitation, but the important part is that the form is not the cause or the concern, it’s the rocket fuel: the poems jitter and shake, they move their mountains, and though I’d still say of Zach that there is a tethering coldness (I’m sure he’d retort that my poems go so far that they manipulate emotionally) this collection heats up, almost paradoxically, because of its reserve. I was impressed and surprised. I think it will go far. Surely the idiots who generically challenge him, saying the criticism outpaces the poetry, will have to shut up, or at least revise upward. Intelligence has been cultivated, and though there are a few too many “I’ve been everywhere man” poems crippled by in-your-face anaphora, the rescuing and elevating poems are just too numerous for him not to find his ideal audience. This is a great book.