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.

Monday, 7 March 2005

"Floods" by Maurice Riordan (Faber and Faber, 2000)

"never strains after effect" says the blurb, but too often subtle flavours become weak ones, with passages like - "Moreover water, which in its pure state is colourless, without taste or smell, produces just these effects in living things. We need only think of years when the Nile fails to flood and the land to the south becomes a flat burnt desert. Egypt practically ceases to exist". Some poems rhyme ("Caroline Songs" mixes sections of rhyming couplets with 4-line and 5-line stanzas)

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