I very much like the rhythmic snap of "Late June", combination of syllabics
(6 a line) & a tendency to 2 dactyls in the 6-syllable long words at the end
of the quatrains. What is described leaves me fairly clammy (oh suburbia,
lang, lang ist's her, I lived in North Cheam), but that's maybe also the
point. A poem like "Museum of the Forest" reminds me somewhat of early Peter
Redgrove, though the tone is at once wryer and more wide-eyed. "Interior
Designers..." is a little too pointed. "Dragons" strikes me as an "English"
rewriting of a Kenneth Koch poem, without the joie de vivre (so, English!
brrr! I hate us.)) Droll (folderol, I'm a troll). I loved some of the play
in "from _Blizzard_" ~ especially in 8 & 9 (stanzas 3 & 4 ~ or are these
sonnets? I say yes.) The rhythms have a pleasing varied tripping character.
Then "those hoarse, white memories you can't unscream" is a line I will
never forget ~ in fact I've always known it, between the lines of poems by
Paul Zech & Albert Ehrenstein."Some bastard starts to play a bass guitar" is
straight out of German Expressionism. So this little collection very much
suggests to me Home Counties Expressionism. After several rereadings I was
most moved by _The Cathedral_, and oh! I wish I could write like that,
England or no England. I'd love to go to the cathedral ~ where is it? Hope
it's in Wales. "courteous love" is great. And who are "the muttering
guards"? A touch of mystery. I've sort of gone from the bottom to the top
here. At first I felt resistance, then I began to savour the very individual
fashioning.
Martin
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