Customer Reviews

Film History

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Al Maginnes is a criminally overlooked poet. His work is accessible yet complex, an artful melding of lyric and narrative. *FILM HISTORY* demonstrates this melding via a series of longish poems that address the poet's past, his coming of age, and his eventual struggles with middle age. Maginnes' poems call to mind old, grainy photographs, haunting yet familiar, mysterious yet grounded. In poems like "Dark Shadows," the poet finds a way to address an abstraction idea like racism through the lens of a certain vampire-haunted soap opera--risky? Yes. Successful? You betcha.

WordTech designs a handsome, book, as well. The gutters are quite large and the type easily readable. The cover image is haunting--a black and white photo of an old home's foyer. Light softly beneath the door frame and through the windows. A staircase disappears to the right of the photograph--not unlike Maginnes' poems, which provide doors, windows, and staircases in, but never offer the promise of escape.