Paul Lee
Reviews
River Suite by Roselle Angwin,
no ISBN, A5, Fire in the Head, PO Box 17, Yelverton, Devon, PL20 6YF, www.fire-in-the-head.co.uk, £4.00.
So, defenceless and naked against her own criteria, how does this measure up? Are there clichés? Some - ‘the land of the living’, ‘herd of wild horses’, ‘sailed for unknown lands’. Is there simile and imagery? ‘...here where the heart of Devon clenches tight / and squeezes out its rivers / like arteries clotted with granite’, though dropping that ‘like’ would have made the last line stronger. However, in the next stanza, those same rivers are ‘...opening from the earth’s dark magma / like creases in the palm of a hand’. Same quibble on that ‘like’, and one image is enough - ‘murder your little darlings!’ Are there rhythm, cadence, musicality, sensory detail, the concrete world? ‘...where night when it comes / is an otter, a dark slide / a glide of silk on silk’. And so the ticks pile up, except against her one aberration, section 6 - ‘oh come oh come in the briny dawn’ which is near-doggerel, inferior and unnecessary.
no ISBN, A5, Fire in the Head, PO Box 17, Yelverton, Devon, PL20 6YF, www.fire-in-the-head.co.uk, £4.00.
So, defenceless and naked against her own criteria, how does this measure up? Are there clichés? Some - ‘the land of the living’, ‘herd of wild horses’, ‘sailed for unknown lands’. Is there simile and imagery? ‘...here where the heart of Devon clenches tight / and squeezes out its rivers / like arteries clotted with granite’, though dropping that ‘like’ would have made the last line stronger. However, in the next stanza, those same rivers are ‘...opening from the earth’s dark magma / like creases in the palm of a hand’. Same quibble on that ‘like’, and one image is enough - ‘murder your little darlings!’ Are there rhythm, cadence, musicality, sensory detail, the concrete world? ‘...where night when it comes / is an otter, a dark slide / a glide of silk on silk’. And so the ticks pile up, except against her one aberration, section 6 - ‘oh come oh come in the briny dawn’ which is near-doggerel, inferior and unnecessary.
Page(s) 22
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