Customer Reviews

Drawn Inward

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Among his myriad positive traits, Mike Maguire is a brilliant poet. I highly recommend this book of his work. It has several sections, including palindromes, redividers, and poems about trains. On the first read, you will be awed by his ability to manipulate words into coherent and lengthy palindromes - but this is no mere parlour trick. In addition to being palindromes, they are strikingly beautiful and meaningful and could just as well exist as works of art even without their wordplay.

After sitting around with some friends, the best we could come up with was "taco cat." Mike goes much further than this.

It is easy to make a palindrome, it is harder to make a palindrome that actually makes sense. And the longer the palindrome, the harder it is for it to retain some modicum of consistency. But somehow Maguire is able to fashion long form poetry that you would never even realize was palindromic until someone told you.

And not only does Maguire do palindromes, but he has other sections of this book that have other types of contrained word poetry which are equally amazing.