On a second reading, I think I paced myself more appropriately, finding poems that are pleasant, or wry, or are thoughtful anecdotes, as well as a few poems that are quirky. I like "Gravestones", "The rain" (serves WCW right) and the final poem, "Reflection", which is about someone in a room seeing himself in the night window. It ends with
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I envy him his serenity and complacence and wonder what he's saying with his pen but he turns off his lamp and disappears |
But when wry or anecdotal poems don't quite work, they can sound rather sedate. "Letter from Lesbos" is a letter (prose rather than poetry). It contains a decent enough idea that is competently albeit unsurprizingly executed. Likewise with "I, Sardine" and "A day in the life of an objective correlative". "Up from the provinces" is prose. The poems on pages 7, 8, 16, 19, 23, 24, 26 and 31 seem on the flat side to me.
Other reviews
- Noel Williams (Antiphon)
- Gina Wilson, Rob A Mackenzie and Matthew Stewart (Sphinx)
- Keith Dersley
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