"The Bigger Picture" by D.A. Prince (Happenstance, 2022)

Poems from Fenland Journal, Magma, Stand, The High Window, The North, The Rialto, etc.

Imagery abounds -

• a distant wind-farm is like "silver stubble prickling the horizon" (Visibility)
• "Peace had no dates - it sprawled/ shapeless in gaps between the wars" (History Lessons)
• 'Is your journey really necessary' captures the magic moment of waking after a night of sudden snow - "we're back in childhood, with an absence note/ and the snow's smile of glittering alibi"
• In "The painter of icons" "A lifetime condenses into an emptied self"

Reading the first poem, "The Future", gives me the feeling I'm in safe hands - one metaphor shifts into another, never quite right, which is also a description of the future. Some of the other poems fueled my internal poetry/prose debate and my interest in "storyfying" -

• "The House of cards" is an interesting enough 2-page read, but I couldn't help thinking prose would have been a more efficient vehicle.
• "The Selmer Series VI saxophone (1954-74)" unpicks an urban myth - a good urban myth. The way facts/memories are turned into tales is a common theme in this book. The poem ends with "And what else is a story, after all?".
• I like the plot of "Fahrkarta Europa" - an old train ticket shows that a train journey was interrupted, but the narrator can't recall where. The first stanza is "Nineteen-euros-worth of second-class scene-change/ (von Lyubljana nach Nove Gorica))/ through the melting greens of wood and meadow/ and glimpses of water, and this ticket/ stamped '06' twice over, so we changed - where?". The stanza - the first line in particular - made me think about prose/poetry modes. The first line concisely provides information and a summary of what the journey felt like, but how might prose readers react to it? Depends on the context, I suppose. I'd guess that as a prose piece's first line it wouldn't adversely attract attention to itself.
• "Sabbioneta" is a Città ideale (it was built in the Renaissance following urban planning theories), but seeing it now, with lorries of freshly picked tomatoes, "Who wouldn't want to live there?"
• "Two Plants" is repeated on the back cover. Because this poet's work is easy to read (no layout bling, disruption, etc) it's easy to underestimate. In this poem one could take a while identifying the I/you personae. Writer/reader? Lovers? 2 aspects of the creative poet? There's a twist at the end, but the title could be a twist too - "plant" has extra meanings that (say) "tree" lacks.