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.
Showing posts with label 'The Ghostwriter'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'The Ghostwriter'. Show all posts

Wednesday, 24 March 2004

"The Ghostwriter" by Mairi MacInnes (Bloodaxe, 1999)

Some sonnets and couplets, but the rhyme was so loose in places ("else"/"unfinished"; "mine"/"wrong") that I couldn't always work out the rhyme scheme. I also had trouble wondering why in some poems alternate lines were indented - continuation lines? Not much imagery: I like "his intensity,/lit from within like a projector that's jammed/and overheating" and "arguments from the silence/under my hissing tyres/repeated again and again as though/I do not take them in" but "he bursts from the hedge/like a sneeze from the throat" sounds odd.

There's something of moderate interest in most poems. The "Engagement" sequence appealed to me most.