Chang, director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of Hunger and Inheritance, sticks close to home as she follows Roman Morris from his days as an M.F.A. student in the late 1980s to his soaring career as a published poet, tenured professor, and Pulitzer Prize winner. Unfortunately, the book lends credence to the clichés that plague modern poets and the institutions that foster them: wine-fueled workshops are held by candlelight, and Roman's fantasies about his talented, beautiful, and aloof workshop professor lead to a student-teacher affair. Roman's eventual success brings out his resentment of the academy and its favoritism and politics, but this is a work of fiction, and the championing of creative writing programs should not be its cause. In Chang's hands, the world of poetry is a cliché; instead of a novel, she delivers a case study of the modern poet with little bearing in reality and characters as one-dimensional as the premise. While the language is well crafted, readers may be disappointed by the lack of quality storytelling. (Sept.)
