“Smoking opium in Moscow” by Roger Caldwell (Shoestring, 2020)

Poems from Antigonish Review, Dream Catcher, Interpreter’s House, Poetry (Chicago) etc.

The first section did little for me. Here's some of p.12

In the end curiosity proved too much. We traipsed upstairs to his hotel room, Knocked on the door, then pushed it open - Only to find we had come too late. It was as if he had never been there. He had departed abruptly from the scene

“Blood on the keys: the case of comrade Shostakovich” ends with “His funeral,/        one worthy of a major “Soviet artist”,/                 will take place at an unlucky time// when orchestra are out of town,/         so when Chopin’s Funeral March strikes up/,                it will be butchered by a military band,// and over his grave there will be speeches/        stale, lengthy, platitudinous,/                 by Khrennikov and other stalwarts// of the Ministry of Culture – not a note/        of his own music will be heard/                on that unseasonably chilly afternoon”. What’s interesting about the language? Why all the spaces?

What does the stanza like “To prove him wrong would be an uphill task,/ and here there are no hills to climb,/ but merely flatlands" (p.48) do, beyond using a word with a double meaning?

The pieces are informative, there's the odd quotable phrase (e.g. "he is now almost museum of himself" - p.42), but there are too many pieces like "Nothing like St. Albans". "A taste of gun-oil” may be my favourite.

Other reviews

• James Roderick Burns (The collection excels in first drawing, then exploding, the gilded illusions of western culture.)