"Night Journey" by Josephine Dickinson (Flambard, 2008)

4 poems from The Rialto, 2 from PNR, Ploughshares, etc. 4 sequences 3-10 pages long and some individual poems. I find them hard going.

"A History of Moths" is 14 lines, some iambic pentameter, some not. The half-rhyme scheme is aaabbbcccdddee (if "books ... black ... stacked" counts as a triplet). It begins with "What were you thinking as you wintered the books?/ Moth dark with soot they'd print your fingers black". The 2nd line puzzles me. Why is "Moth" singular? What does "they" refer to? Perhaps to the books - perhaps they are moth-dark with soot? It ends with "And me/ you wanted to coin more books. A 'History/ of Moths,' perhaps? - A trove of fairy tales?/ With endings next to which this other one pales?". What does "coin" mean? Create? Buy? And what does the ending mean?

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" includes

A moment's grace - then a copper chorus jars the crop hush, the sea centres in the vein blood, yields aching heart to syzygy. New seed falls, light accrues in attar

which I have no way to deal with. Page 43 begins with these 3 stanzas - "We have come into a hidden world/ where silence hums/ an invisible mass,/ a shadow// of suns,/ a music/ philosophers don't know,/ a rippling halo,// holy hope,/ provisional dark/ of burning star/ and satellite". No more convincing are the short lines on p.47 - "The chain slung/ round her neck// threads twin/ enclipped/ gold faces,// awaits the silent/ slither of gravity,/ her awakening,// the sun,/ the dark interior/ of the earth". Or this rhymed extract from "Invisible" - "I was afraid of difference,/ yet my only skill/ was to mould it from the wetness - / an angel on the hill". Poetry or Call my bluff?

"Night" works for me at first - "Your stars begin to sizzle in the water./ Tall and dark as the sky, you wait/ high over the river where day still itches/ and sheep jiggle on the wooded hill,/ unscattered by the streak of a dog" - then perhaps tries too hard and becomes obscure

The title poem or "You" might be my favourite. Maybe "Tracking Venus" is my least favourite.