Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Wednesday 16 February 2005

"The Brink" by Jacob Polley (Picador, 2003)

Reminded me of "Painted Field" or (with "The Distance" for example) early Muldoon. I liked "the Crow", "Snow" and a few others. I liked some of the initial imagery even if the poem ran out of steam - gulls "fall about laughing" or are "trying to shake themselves out of their sleeves". I'm puzzled by the start of "Allhallows" though - "morning breaks like an egg/or a promise".

"The Kingdom of Sediment" was belatedly ambitious. At times narrative decays into chronological lists, and sometimes lines seem to grow shorter when he runs out of things to say. Like a high-performance gas-guzzler he freewheels when the metaphors dry up.

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