"The Wound Register" by Esther Morgan

Poems from Cortland review, The High Window, Ploughshares, etc. There's some neat imagery - e.g in "Equinox", "you are sleeping/ arms raised either side of your head/ fingers curled as you parachute/ through a night sky ... each morning fresh as white silk/ landing you gently a little further away". "Frozen" is ok too. There are several standard poems - e.g. "At the checkout", "Crane", "In the Wars". Several of the poems have observation topped by an image (often at the poem's end) that the success of the poem depends on. Too often though, that image isn't new. I like "back and forth on your haunches/ like a bear in a zoo, desperate to break/ the bars of your own small body" (p.23) but the following images sound too familiar -

• "the cloud shadow moving like huge airships over the downs" (p.27)
• "Your childhood is pulling away from me like a bus I'm running flat-out to catch ... fingers still curled around the one thing I forgot to give you" (p.28)
• "the stranger in the night who holds the cup to your lips" (p.29)

"Lines of Desire" has an unusual layout, each couplet indented more than the previous one. "Labours" has sections about various countryside activities, with "a home-made man standing day after day with his arms outstretched at the centre of a huge loneliness", etc. "Bonding" is a mirror poem - the first line is the same as the last, the 2nd the same as the penultimate, and so on. "Redcurrants" is very like a poem I might hear at my local poetry group written by people twice her age. "The Casualty Book" seems weak to me. "Restoration", in a poetical format of short-lined couplets, seems especially prosey.

Other reviews

• Ada Wofford (her poems are quaint, quiet, and often quite pretty but rarely are they stimulating or unique. ... Too many of these poems are written in a tone and manner that says little other than, this is poetry. Serious, sober, solemn, prayer-like, and a bit boring. ... But there are two poems where Morgan adventurously leaps out of her comfort zone: “A True and Perfect Inventory” and “Stories.” )