Milne's striking and vigorous poems show the push-pull of modernism versus history. (Poetry)
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The Scottish-born, Cambridge-based Milne is not yet 40, yet he supplies plenty of fiercely intelligent material, fueled by acutely measured prosody and an array of dazzling syntactic maneuvers, for a selected. Milne, editor of the journal and press Parataxis, puts on a face of aggro-modernistic glee while parodying 21st-century political quagmire. The verbal pyrotechnics can move so quickly one might miss the cartoonish humor ("tuned to fine leaves of/ ouch") mixed with lyrically inclined moments of over-the-top satire: "Die,/ die, my text,/ like any temp or co-worker/ left for dead/ amid the station-wagons/ of the photocopier." Milne's poems refuse to allow a reflective, single voice to stand in for universal suffering and provide expressive catharsis "I am aid pack, cash-crop and pearl mint tax heaven" a position that connects his work with strains of the Language and New York Schools, as well with J.H. Prynne and other Cambridge poets. Mars Disarmed contains the complete texts of four sequences not included in any form in The Damage. The most provocative in the current political climate is "The Gates of Gaza," which refuses to bring its disturbing half-images of first-world splendor, old-world doom and contemporary geographical mismatch into focus, in a manner that mirrors the half-truths of media sound bites: "derided yet from slaughter free to/ burn up as death squads clear the/ Workers Party now no work flow// has the least string of entailment/ so tight as could draw phusis off/ charmingly polished pants." It's a kind of writing that won't work for everyone, but Milne's energy and commitment to oblique truth-telling will come through clearly, even to those unsympathetic to his forms or aims. (Damage: May; Mars: July 1)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
A substantial collection of poetry ... left-leaning yet awkwardly playful, mixing ethical concern with fantastic energy and formal device... Milne sings, puzzles, suggests and takes lyricism to new places. -- Steve Spence Terrible Work ... At their best, these poems, teetering on the edge of the communicable, offer a delightful playful surface, as if unexpected words had somehow slipped into someone else's structures. -- Tony Frazer Shearsman ... gloriously Apocalyptic ... Milne's most vulnerable characteristic, his almost bardic intensity, is actually what I find most admirable ... -- James Keery P.N. Review We get a full set of warnings as well as a strong charge to the batteries. The circuit of a trapped intellection, fuelled by passion for clarity and outcome but hedged by the current limits of investment in the language market (loanback, I suppose), maps out an uncomfortable place with a corrective ferocity ... -- J.H. Prynne Milne isn't a million miles from the techno-Situationism of The KLF... Perhaps his genius is really comic... The technique is like sampling, and The Apes of God ... -- Andrew Duncan
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