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Martin Corless-Smith's collection OF PISCATOR has been published by Georgia U.P. Unpriced. The t.p. says 'Athens & London' but there's no UK address. isbn 0-8203-1947-3 MC-S is an Englishman who has worked in the US for some years & perhaps the transAtlantic shift underwrites the quick-change dialect of these poems - they ARE dialect poems of a kind, although they skate across a variety of vernaculars; grammar fractures without undue force, fragments of older written English float through. Quasi-folk-rhymes break up narratives, the 'songs' seem ghosts of untold stories. The title sequence formalises the multivocality by identifying speakers in the manner of a play, introducing a disjointedness I feel uneasy with; there is a more flowing transition from the opening Songs to the impressive closing sequence To Absent Minister. Good balance between sound-control and unruliness. I can't identify all the voices and prefer the mystery of it anyway; but Clare keeps turning up (rhythms and textures of the journals rather than the poems) and I heard David Jones now and then. And nice to meet Mr Beddoes on page 16. -- Alan Halsey %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%