"pandemonium" by Andrew McMillan (Cape, 2021)

Poems from Granta, New Statesman, Wild Court, etc. No commas (gaps are used instead) or full stops. Even the Acks have gaps rather than punctuation.

"for how many years" is a disappointing start, using a staid main idea and short lines to reach the bottom of the page. "passion play" is a distinct improvement.

It looks to me as if he's struggling to come up with enough material. "routine" is slight. p.9 has nearly sufficient material but for some reason(?) it's in couplets and has inline gaps. "my sister says" is twice as long as it need be. "circumstance" is slight. "pill-box" is better. I like the plot of p.19, but the idea's dragged out, and is semen sweet? Nearly all of the "Swan" section could go, replaced by an extended version of "viii".

The "George" section is maybe about a sister giving birth to a still-born - "you were not the small hook of life which didn't latch nor the spark from a flint which didn't ignite". p.51 is a "bird-hit-my-window" poem. Not a patio door this time, and the bird is dead, not stunned. Dead mothers are in the newspaper. "the yard is still downy with the soft shrapnel of the bird". Again, it's a section that could have been a page or 2.

"Knotweed is a section of 14 14-lined poems (not sonnets), several sharing a garden theme.

The first section has some "skin as surface" imagery

• a quiet withdrawal from the self as though the body steps back from its own skin (p.6)
• it's as though you've swum back to the surface of your body (p.13)
• led by our blood    needing to see it    bring it back to the surface like some memory of love (p.18)

The blood imagery continues later -

• I have seen them spread like blood around a body from the station (p.40)
• their voices bleed through the bricks (p.41)

Other imagery includes

• we ... tore into each other like presents opened each other up (p.18. But haven't I seen this before?)
• the body slumps and hardens so they become crumbled statues of themselves (p.40)
• through the empty ringpull of net-curtain there is a tinfoil glint of Christmas (p.42. I don't get that)
• the scaffolding loosens its grip each day sways like a newborn foal in the wind (p.43. I think I've seen that foal-scaffold one before)

Other reviews

• Kate Kellaway (there is no poem in it unmarked by suffering. Pain, in these poems, becomes a form of clarity.)