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, 4 October 2025

“Birdsong on Mars” by Jon Glover (Carcanet, 2020)

Poems from PN Review, Stand, etc. – 9 years of poems. 148 pages. Not to my taste - too much staccato word association. Here are examples of what puzzles me - syntax, semantics, form, etc.

  • It was surely destined crass or sweet/ to be running through memories/ of art exhibitions (p.4)
  • Language/ just goes on faster/ than light through mountains,/ quickest neutrinos/ loving safety’s home. (p.8)
  • "Bed-time" is 16 couplets. 30 of the lines have 5 syllables. Lines 3 and 23 don't. The next poem, "Wrapped up" has 17 couplets, with a more ruthless dedication to having 5 syllables/line. There's "greener-/y", "disson-/ance," etc., but the penultimate line is "marginal defiance" . 6 syllables. Why?
  • A landscape darling bereft./ I went for it like sunlight.// Sun-tan flatline message/ schooling a metaphor's blast whilst sickening for something (p.29)
  • Pick the true digits for their smell,/ stinks right for birds or whale breath (p.39)
  • Extraordinary fames, sad folios,/ I'm there again, resenting Samson/ Agonistes' GM crops. Ink, black ink, weighs/ words at a perfect force to be sewn. (p.93)

I like "Canals"

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