Of Piscator: Poems (Contemporary Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Martin Corless-Smith (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

And In Lowly Accents
Burnt Out Of House
Chair Disappear
Day Beats Breathes
Day Isue
Dead Mary
Dear Harmless Span
The Diseases
Dull Flux Fear Flux
Faint Mater
For The Art Do Need To Be Eased Out Of Regime
Fullmoon
Gare De Lyon
The Golden Round
Great Joy From The Many Burdened Sow
Hours Lives
How Happy Am I Gave Way
I Have It Now
I Meant To Meet
Lit Across A Lane
Loo Hammy Hammy Loo
Loo What Sholde A Man In Thyse Dayes Now Wryte
Love Hendy
March Of Belisarius
Maundering Child
Noon-glass Under Water
Of Piscator
Our Lady Of Snow
Sounded Along Dove Dove
Thin Grace
To Absent Minister
Torn To All
When Leave Of Home
When To Motherchild
Wrong With Feet
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 79 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820319473
• ISBN-13: 978-0820319476
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,246,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chelsea (by Harriet Zinnes), October 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Of Piscator: Poems (Contemporary Poetry Series) (Paperback)

It's as if the poet managed the almost impossible: to make contemporary techniques combine with the traditional in such a way that he turns on his head both the old and the new. If the Charles Bernsteins and Bruce Andrews of the Language poets make you long for song, for feeling of the old poetries, you must turn to Martin Corless-Smith. You will not miss the disjunctive, discordant alogical manipulations of contemporary poets, but you will also hear the rich sounds of a language achieved by a poet who is as steeped in the solid rhythms of Old English monosyllables--"hound heavens house"--as in the sonorities of Chaucer...It is that retention of music in his lines that makes Corless-Smith a most uncanny, original postmodern poet, singing the contradiction and disorders of the millennium.

4.0 out of 5 stars A most interesting book of poetry!, April 13, 2001

By 

Mary Kasimor (St. Cloud, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Of Piscator: Poems (Contemporary Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I have just "discovered" this poet and reading his poetry over and over again means rediscovering language, sound, wit, and everything else that I love about poetry. I consider his language Old English, with pastoral themes in a post-modern context. Very interesting.

5.0 out of 5 stars From the publisher of Corless-Smith's Complete Travels, October 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Of Piscator: Poems (Contemporary Poetry Series) (Paperback)

"MC-S is an Englishman who has worked in the US for some years and perhaps the transatlantic shift underwrites the quick-change dialect of these poems--they ARE dialect poems of a kind, although they skate across a variety of vernaculars; grammar fractures without undue force, fragments of older written English float through. Quasi-folk-rhymes break up narratives, the 'songs' seem ghosts of untold stories. The title sequence formalises the multivocality by identifying speakers in the manner of a play, introducing a disjointedness I feel uneasy with; there is a more flowing transition from the opening Songs to the impressive closing sequence To Absent Minister. Good balance between sound-control and unruliness. I can't identify all the voices and prefer the mystery of it anyway, but Clare keeps turning up (rhythms and textures of the journals rather than the poems) and I hear David Jones now and again. And nice to meet Mr. Beddoes on page 16.