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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