"Unportioned" by Ruth O'Callaghan (Salmon poetry, 2019)

A "New and Selected". It starts with a flurry of light effects - "ruined light" (p.13), "weave of light and shade" (p.14), "re-arrangement of light ... conspiracy of shadows" (p.17), "fluencies of light" (p.18), "brittle light" (p.19)

In "Alterations", the 2nd half of the poem is a loose reversal of the 1st - the order of the clauses is reversed, and a few words are moved. There are 3 villanelles - all early.

The phrasing's too poetic for me in places - e.g.

• "Yet still we laughed while a laze of bees drowsed the days" (p.21)
• "Distance deters contact. Stricken, I know we cannot be/ fellow travellers but knowledge is never acquiescence." (p.62) is lofty - not out of context for the page, but not for me all the same.
• "a squall of nurses flood the room landscaped with machines" (p.88)

I struggled with several sections. E.g. "Guest" begins with "Behind the crinkle-crankle wall ropes/ of rain and light litter the path. A crunch/ of bones, the ring of fine glass unzipping/ laughter, rankles the man who stands/ on the edge". I think it's about a guest feeling uncomfortable at a party, but why not have a comma after "wall"? Why is the wall mentioned? Is he inside or outside?

I've already written about "A lope of time", one of her earlier books. I don't think she's my type of poet.

"A Lope of Time" by Ruth O'Callaghan (Shoestring, 2009)

A variety of formats and forms - as well as the usual boxes there are assonanced couplets, 2 sestinas, 2 villanelles, a triangular poem, and prose formats. 4 poems begin with "...". "Waking" has lines 5 and 9 indented by the same amount, lines 2 and 14 indents by different amounts, and the other lines left-aligned. "Seadown" is similar. "While waiting for bad news" has some centred sections and some indented stanzas. Towards the end of the book indentation runs riot. "Snow" for example ends "smoking at an open window, the man notes the abandoned boat. Come spring he will replace it." More accurately (or bizzarely) it finishes with

smoking at an open window
                      the man
        notes
                the abandoned boat

come spring 
        he will replace it

Here's part of "Journal", showing a more philosophical side. I've used "Perhaps" in this way too - harmless enough I suppose

But there's absence - does that matter? Does distance? Time will betray essence as skin, stretched over bones, reveals structure. Yet here is no knowledge, no certainty: take time apart and what is left? Years in which shirt buttons are counted, a christening shawl tracing a shroud. Perhaps that is the only true measure. Perhaps with each departure there is not renewal but simply a re-visiting, a lope of time, the scratch of black and white film.             *** And so, unresolved, unabled to distinguish that certain darkness between the stars, we lay our oars to rest

I'd like to see more like that. The villanelles and sestinas show the weakness of the forms. They look like exercises, as do poems like "Twelfth Night" and "Chase". "Night Road" is more interesting, and narrative poems like "Chinese Burn" impress me. Sometimes the poems sound as if they've been pumped up with poetification - "8.47 p.m." ends "a stealthy rain infiltrates/ and long-held words hover/ under unquiet skies"