Poems from Acumen, Envoi, Orbis, etc.
In section 1, "Experience", quite a few of the poems are a page or so long and have the feel of anecdotes (some episodic, some including dialect) with a punchline, or are like journal entries. "Different" (iambic tetrameter, 11 5-lined stanzas) and "As You Sow" (trochaic tetrameter, 11 6-lined stanzas) are typical. I like those 2 work. Some of the others I'm less convinced by -
- “Bloody War!” - "Bloody War! Oh what a palaver –/ clickety-clack of knitting needles … Spitfires chasing Messerschmitts,/ shells that rip the town to bits" etc.
- “Recurring Dreams” is prose - I'm not saying it's bad, just that it's on the wrong shelf
- “Silent Spy” might have worked, except it loses any surprise by half way
- “April 10th, 1965” ends with “our breathing/ merged when our two bodies cleaved as one/ with the sonorous sounds of surf”. Ironic re-use of a common cliché of the time?
- "2. Family Day, June 1967", about a father who seems to want to separate, ends with the father being compared to an eagle, the last line (the only indented one in the poem) being "Ready to fly ...". Those dots are too much.
- "3. Thanksgiving, October 1970" has "the Cascade Mountains rise/ in sheeted skies, like the demented/ ghosts of wedding cakes, where hawks/ and turkey vultures flay the air". Imagery doesn't abound in this collection, but here is a sustained passage of "poetic" language.
- "Whore games" and "Nursery rhyme" are both rhyming and punchy, the latter being the best of the 2.
- "Stepmother" and "Goa" are far too long for what they are.
Section 2, "Other voices", interest me less - "Dancing Ragtime to the Blues" and "Disconnected" are too gentle. It's light verse tinged with sadness, disappointment and dead children - rather like Wendy Cope at times. It's wistful, easy to like at readings. There's more rhyme - "Old Scores" is a sonnet, and there's a villanelle.
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