{"id":441,"date":"2011-11-15T17:40:54","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T17:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=441"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:39:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:39:13","slug":"peter-daniels-reviews-modern-love-by-max-wallis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/peter-daniels-reviews-modern-love-by-max-wallis\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Daniels reviews 'Modern Love' by Max Wallis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Wallis <\/span>Modern Love<\/span><\/a> Flipped Eye (Flap pamphlet series no.5) \u00a34.00<\/span>


This sequence takes a year of finding love and losing it; moving from \u201cAll the days to tread till I meet you\u2026\u201d to \u201cAllow yourself this one day \/ hungover from love\u201d. This is young love, gay love, Facebook love, but pretty universal in the way it works. The poems mostly address \u201cyou\u201d, which is sometimes the lover and sometimes the self; but the couple\u2019s first encounter is third person \u2013 \u201cOnce, \/ I \/ met him \/ under a \/ vowel filled nightmare\u201d which is structurally necessary to get the reader onto the right sexuality. The importance of pronouns is part of the youthful experience, too: \u201cThe words I\u2019m no longer afraid of, \/ \u2018I\u2019, \u2018us\u2019, \u2018we\u2019.\u201d The poet\u2019s fling with someone else is described significantly with a switch from self-address to a third-person \u201cthey\u201d as if it wasn\u2019t quite him, then back again to \u201cWake in the morning and weigh your heart\u201d for the morning after. <\/span>

There are some poems that don\u2019t quite work, especially \u201cHiroshima Vow Towers\u201d which makes the grand connections of public and personal disaster in a kind of overblown haiku style that takes a page and a half, including unnecessary explanation about Hiroshima. The following poem, \u201cI Walk The City At Night To Find You\u201d shows this up with an entirely convincing case of just being and experiencing, and putting it into words. The poems handle the tricky interface of sex and words well, especially through sound-texture combining with the images the words create: \u201cYou stir, grab and hold me into the nook, \/ the slotted jig, the saw of your neck; puck the air with your mouth\u201d. \u201cWhen A Thief Kisses You, Count Your Teeth\u201d is a great exercise in the lover\u2019s imperative, moving the physicality from \u201cUndo my belt, wrench it until the loops split. Curl it. \/ Slide down skin-clung trousers\u201d to \u201cGouge my eyes and add them \/ to the necklace you wear. Take it all. Everything. Now.\u201d<\/span>

I must be nearly three times the poet\u2019s age, but that part of young gay love (or any love) hasn\u2019t changed a lot. The social circumstances of being gay have altered, and the internet has developed the social opportunities, but while \u201cModern love is not told on paper\u201d, the book <\/span>Modern Love<\/span> is nevertheless very much on paper (nice production), telling of how \u201cFacebook has updated \/ but we are still in this state.\u201d Young people still have their experience to live, and they write their poems about it.<\/span>


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…..reviewed by by Peter Daniels<\/a>
<\/font><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Max Wallis Modern Love Flipped Eye (Flap pamphlet series no.5) \u00a34.00This sequence takes a year of finding love and losing it; moving from \u201cAll the days to tread till I meet you\u2026\u201d to \u201cAllow yourself this one day \/ hungover from love\u201d. This is young love, gay love, Facebook love, but pretty universal in the […]<\/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-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","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=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23761,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/23761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}