Now here's a shameless piece of not quite promotional hustling by ME, in
that I'm forwarding on this appraisal of my magazine by CANDICE, which was
posted to the Imitations list earlier today.
david bircumshaw
from C.Ward as follows:
Apologies for cross-posting (don't you love the way everybody apologizes for
this, then goes right on doing it?). But I want to tout the first issue of A
CHIDE'S ALPHABET on account of its spectacularly consistent
spectacularity--not a ringer in the lot unless it's one of mine (how would I
know?)--and to encourage listees to order it from David Bircumshaw so that
he doesn't get depressed and stop putting it out. After spending a couple
of hours pleasurably immersed in its 40-odd pages, I think it would be a
bargain at twice the price (even free-squared!), if only for the dazzling
arrays of Emma Lew and Trevor Joyce poems--a nice big chunk of each, and
Joyce's
brilliant, sustained use of repetition in the 3 "lattice" poems invites
their repeated rereading--plus a good-sized, well-varied selection of lyrics
and longer poems by Alison Croggon. The Robin Hamilton sampler here displays
his trademark wit, and I was pleased to make the acquaintance of Welsh poet
Ian Davidson, whose work I didn't know at all. The issue is nicely framed by
editor Bircumshaw's "Modest Introduction" (with an amusingly breezy
acknowledgments statement) and a nice mix of poet Bircumshaw's new and
older, cryptically encrypted poems.
The single, relatively brief poem by Randolph Healy here is one on which I
could spend hours happily puzzling out its fittings: 5 senses, 7 locks
holding 7 broken keys (a chromosomal image with an allusion to the Seven
Sleepers?), 4 tastes, 4 odors, a robbery, a birth, a case of lordosis(?),
and a race with time--all contextualized to a right triangle sided by
difference and identity, "joined" by a dying star. The poem's entitled
"Flight." Go figure.
Well, I could go on, but won't, and just hope I've whetted your appetites
for
A CHIDE'S ALPHABET.
Candice Ward
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