The Disorder of Love

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and a
poet. He is the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Karen Connelly’s poems are accessible and highly personal, replete
with revealing details. She writes rather glibly about lovers and life
in Greece. Readers interested in confessional poetry may like The
Disorder of Love, but it is rather artless and self-involved. Lyric
poets often sound too impressed with themselves, and Connelly’s book
falls into this trap. She can write brilliant lines, and some of her
best are in “Fragments”; it is the brevity of each observation that
makes this poem memorable. Other poems sprawl, because the poet assumes
too quickly that her experience will interest the reader. She needs
fresher images and a stronger sense of poetic form to create an abiding
interest.