A pamphlet of poems from The High Window, The Interpreter's House, Orbis, South etc.
None of the poems tried too hard, and all had something to like. The most common shape (of the more successful poems anyway) is a surrealism/symbolism that gradually takes over from an initial observation.
"Abandoned bike" starts with "I wonder when the abandoned bicycle/ lost its last bit of bikiness.". It's easy to guess how this might continue. It manages to end with some less-easily-guessed ideas - the final loss of "how to be unique - the one/ pulled from a rank of slumped neighbours// to enjoy that special taste/ of spun air, that journey home".
Some make so little use of line-breaks that they might as well be prose - "Hares at Dublin airport" and "Autumn wasps" for example are in short-lined couplets, the lyricism of the final lines fitting easily within the style of Micros.
"Hoovers" and "Exotic" seem too light to me. I much prefer "The sound of paper" (my favourite) and "Honshu bees".
Other reviews
- Wendy Klein (In addition to her marvellous observations of animals and insects, her subjects include poems that explore her Oriental/Anglo-Saxon heritage. Her parents, particularly her father, are portrayed at various stages in their lives. ... Every poem here is so much larger in scope than its words on the page, but none more so than the title poem itself. )
- Matthew Paul ( the poems which chime with me most are those which describe Yamamoto’s English mother and, more often, her Japanese father ... Yamamoto’s depiction of surreal memory is wondrous, particularly in the title poem)
No comments:
Post a Comment