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.

Saturday, 17 February 2024

"Voices from the dolls' house" by Adele Geras (Rockingham, 1994)

It feels rather old fashioned - I feel I understand what's going on. There's some rhyme - a sonnet and a sestina too. The rhyming's tight, but the line-breaks seem flappy. On p.26

She has arranged
around the wicker chair where she will sit
a parasol
a shawl
a vase of flowers:
props appropriate
for delicate thoughts
and baisers du printemps.

there's a colon but no commas, and I don't see why the last 3 lines shouldn't be a single long one, like the 2nd line. Other poems have more line-breaks than I think they need - "A letter from Helen of Troy" could have been laid out as a letter rather than a poem with many short lines, and nowadays I think "Care instructions for a 'Desirée' mirror" would be Flash.

"Four voices" is ambitious.

There's lots of lace and light, and several poems about painting and photography - not just ekphrasis but the nature of posing, etc.

Poems often don't begin on new pages. "I don't lilke printed patterns..being told" on p.21 looks like 2 typos.

p.44 has "the metal/ of interlocking snakes and leaves/ and loops that start here, and end/ nowhere". p.47 has "with patterns/ of interlocking stems and leaves and curves/ that start here and end nowhere". I wonder if the repetition is deliberate.

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