Poems (nearly 100 pages of them!) from Dreamcatcher, Iota, Obsessed with pipework, etc.
She writes in a note that "Neither have I edited them for consistency, especially of punctuation". There's syntax that would be confusing even if commas were used. Extra spaces between words are used sometimes instead of a comma. Some sections are indented.
The first few poems have variety - one-idea poems; short-lined poems; poems that are nearly prose; poems hooked on rhyme. Though no single poem convinces me, I'm happy to read on.
p.11 is one of many pages without punctuation. Sometimes the line-breaks are commas, sometimes they're used merely to make all the lines roughly the same length. It begins with "Solid being a dance of atoms/ a wall is a maze of maybe/ self a metaphor/ not of our choosing" which I like. And I like the later "a shiver of meaning/ crosses our minds with silver". But do I like the poem? I'm not so sure.
In "Stairs", "the active young go scissoring up,/ come back by the banisters sledging:/ the old go slower as the stairs go faster - / time is the other dimension" - I only understand the 2nd line of that.
"Solstices" (which has no comma or full stops) starts with "Two the lily-white boys/ at the solstices they stand" which seems unhelpfully confusing even if you know the "Green Grow the Rushes, O" song. Why not add a comma after "boys"? Better still, why not "Two lily-white boys stand at the solstices"?
"It is shapesharer/ with the ginko leaf" (p.24) means "it has the same shape as the ginko leaf". But why bother deviating from standard language in this way? That's a question I often asked myself when reading this book.
"The marrow was picked from me, shin-bone/ and holes were drilled to make me tibia flute" (p.30) needed a re-read - I parsed it wrongly. Why add obstacles? Why not "The marrow was picked from me, a shin-bone. Holes were drilled to make me into a tibia flute" or "They scraped out my marrow. drilled holes, made me into a tibia flute."
"Ely" has less-contorted syntax and is easy to like. "Rules" gets better as it goes along and might be my favourite.
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