I reviewed My Tokyo back in 1993. I really disliked the ethos of the poet--jet-setting, club-hopping, Bugatti-riding--work that gave "privilege" a whole new meaning. The technique, with all those loose lines and end-stopped rhymes, wasn't impressive either. Later, he had a poem each month, titled with the name of the month, in the WSJ. A friend, an established editor, would clip them and send them. They seemed pretty vacant to me. I'll admit that he presented a type of persona--the poet as well-heeled flaneur--that was original in American poetry: the poet as Richie Rich. Nevertheless, he has managed to stick around, so maybe I'll order the selected ($2.93+shipping at Amazon) and give him another look. Maybe his brief chronicles and abstracts of the times will strike me differently this time. After all, we're pretty obsessed with the lives of the idle rich, so there's one good reason to explore the poetry further.
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