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balancinghistorybooks's review
3.0
I have read a lot of Spark's fiction, but none of her poetry; it seemed obvious, therefore, to pick up a copy of her Complete Poems and read it during the month of her centenary. The poems here are not chronologically ordered, which annoyed me a little; I like to see how poets evolve over time, particularly over the decades in which Spark wrote. The content here is quite varied; Spark writes extensively about writing and London, which I was expecting, but other poems deal with catching bad colds, and leaning over old walls, which I perhaps was not.
Spark's poems are witty and clever, but the collection did not feel like a coherent one to me. Perhaps this is because of the lack of chronological ordering; had it been structured in this way, and one could see the progression of Spark's poetic voice and the continuation of themes, it would have worked better. Sadly, some of the poems here were a little silly and juvenile for my particular taste, and I was largely indifferent to the collection as a whole; very few of these poems really stood out.
Spark's poems are witty and clever, but the collection did not feel like a coherent one to me. Perhaps this is because of the lack of chronological ordering; had it been structured in this way, and one could see the progression of Spark's poetic voice and the continuation of themes, it would have worked better. Sadly, some of the poems here were a little silly and juvenile for my particular taste, and I was largely indifferent to the collection as a whole; very few of these poems really stood out.
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