From Library Journal
These three books of poems represent the first offerings from Junction Press, which hopes to emphasize "the work of underappreciated writers of merit." Elman's world, comprised of loony "pieces" of conversation, parodies Frank O'Hara's agitated imagery. A series of random recollections of a suicidal friend named Keith--"fire eater, geek, stammerer"--this "Cathedral-Tree-Train" derails in disturbed, extreme allusions and an obsession with "talking dirty" and pain ("Again and again colors/ of a wound,/ of menstruation, the reek/ of salt with gulls flying low/ over dead water") before it reaches self-truth. Mee's reminiscences of her father and Georgia are less skewed than Elman's short-circuited elegy for his friend. In precise, touching images, Mee shows that memory retains "a furry distance/ from anything which is alive in a different way." Beneath the surface of these poems "bright as hummingbirds," "shaped by the mind/as dough is shaped," there is a recognition of "laughter" during a search for "the true nature of disaster." Mee has the courage to confront the "sad, broken charm" of burdens of place. Further south, Taylor's native Trinidad (Iere) suffers a sea-change into "soca," a version of Calypso, set "back where/ the road becomes/too narrow for cars": "When there's a fete down in the village,/the boom-shuffle-boom shaking the trees/and swinging the lanterns." Taylor's West Indians are neither children of a ruined paradise nor quaint backdrops for tourists' snapshots. Rather, these independent 'biche-breakers" (truant), mixed like rum and water, succumb to the same "tragedy and the irony" as those in cities alienated from the sea. Taylor infuses language with terse, songlike lyricism by writing about "an island of his own" he loves too much to idealize. As Derek Walcott says in a backcover blurb, "Mervyn Taylor is an honest poet, and that is... sufficient praise indeed."-- Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
