Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The Poetic Image

I’m on a no-buy-books month, out of necessity, as our family holiday has left us with not a lot to spare. In any case, I have four poetry chapbooks to review for Sphinx magazine - my verdict so far is that one is excellent, one not really my kind of thing but good nevertheless, one quite poor, and one which I’m not sure I’m up to reviewing (it might be good, it might be bad, I don’t know…)

But I at least managed to steal a glance at Richard Price’s new collection, Greenfields. I enjoyed a lot of his first full collection, Lucky Day, so I’m looking forward to reading this when I get round to buying it.

The book is split into sections, and a quote at the beginning of one section caught my eye:

“an image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties” (Djuana Barnes)

I like that, as it reveals the endlessly questioning, always provisional yet potentially illuminating, nature of poetic truth.

2 comments:

Marion McCready said...

"I’m on a no-buy-books month" - ooh don't you just hate those kind of months?!

Rob said...

Yes. But I can't complain. To be honest, I have more than enough to read as it is.