{"id":1182,"date":"2008-03-05T20:56:10","date_gmt":"2008-03-05T20:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1182"},"modified":"2008-03-05T20:56:10","modified_gmt":"2008-03-05T20:56:10","slug":"two-book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/two-book-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Two book reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Christian writes…<\/span>

Couple of interesting books have arrived here during the past few weeks. The first is Ten Poems about East Asia & Kitsch Nebula Ampersands And<\/span> \u2013 and that really is the title, not a typo \u2013 by sometime IS&T contributor Ralph-Michael Chiaia. Very nicely produced, perfect bound paperback \u2013 and a pleasure to hold and read. In all there are about 30 poems in the book's 47 pages in a style that combines the intensity of some of the Beat poets with the simplicity of haiku and the mysticism of zen koan. I particularly liked<\/p>\n

Terenganu<\/span>
A gecko scares the hell out of her
I bolt into the bathroom to kill it.<\/p>\n

It chews a cockroach.
An old Malay: it's monsoon season.<\/p>\n

and<\/p>\n

his 'daiku' (death haiku)<\/p>\n

hysterical universe,
how dare you mock me
with your tick-ticking?<\/p>\n

\u2022 The book is published by Coatlism Press (ISBN: 978-0-9802073-0-9), price US$13.95 and is available from www.coatlism.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The second title is Never A Straight Line<\/span> by the Canadian poet Bernice Lever. Again, this is another attractively produced book, also a perfect bound paperback (yes, I know we are meant to read poetry for its content but it doesn't alter the fact that an attractive or imaginative corporeal offering adds to the overall sensory impression and the pleasure of reading) containing 66 poems over 95 pages. Lever has divided her book into five 'themes' and while some of them miss the mark for me (poetry is also a very subjective art form from the point of view of the reader) the majority hit the target. I particularly enjoyed Reunion<\/span> with its all too redolent opening stanza…<\/p>\n

Spare me this misnamed meetings
with ghosts from the past
forerunners of horrors to come<\/p>\n

reminding us all that we can never go back. And Red Dog Retreat<\/span> about the skiers cabin built on a mountain summit in Lever's British Columbia. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Never A Straight Line (ISBN: 978-0-88753-438-6) is part of the Black Moss Press Palm Poets Series. Price C$15.00. For more info visit www.colourofwords.com<\/a> or email bernice@colourofwords.com<\/a>
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Charles Christian writes…Couple of interesting books have arrived here during the past few weeks. The first is Ten Poems about East Asia & Kitsch Nebula Ampersands And \u2013 and that really is the title, not a typo \u2013 by sometime IS&T contributor Ralph-Michael Chiaia. Very nicely produced, perfect bound paperback \u2013 and a pleasure to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}