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casparb's review against another edition
honestly I don't know how many times I've read this but today's another. I think it's a collection that asks u to fall Into the void & doing so! delivers
this time around I kept thinking ., was this written in french & translated ,,, I think the rimbaud is in the roots
this time around I kept thinking ., was this written in french & translated ,,, I think the rimbaud is in the roots
cwilsongarry's review against another edition
4.0
Just owning this book makes me feel more like a proper poet.
I saw Boast read at StAnza 2018 and loved her presence and style. This book was a fantastic study not only in writing, but how we can play with poetry.
It’s effortlessly simple - yet the hard work of not going for any direct meaning must have been an incredible task for Boast and shows what deft and talented a writer she is.
I saw Boast read at StAnza 2018 and loved her presence and style. This book was a fantastic study not only in writing, but how we can play with poetry.
It’s effortlessly simple - yet the hard work of not going for any direct meaning must have been an incredible task for Boast and shows what deft and talented a writer she is.
foggy_rosamund's review against another edition
3.0
I have greatly admired Boast's work in the past, and I was fascinated by the premise of this collection. Boast is inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's idea to write poems that evoke feeling but do not have any direct message. They play on the subconscious and the imagination. I found it very difficult to really get my teeth into this collection: the poems are elusive, and it's hard to find the imagery, let alone the meaning, within them. And yet they have a way of remaining in my mind, and after reading them I felt a sense of calm and of sadness.
The collection uses form very strictly: the first two sections contain poems of five couplets, and the last section contains only sonnets. Boast uses this structure skillfully, and the poems never feel forced into a particular form: in fact, they fall very naturally. This alone is an achievement. A familiarity with Rimbaud's poetry probably also helps the reader -- while I was very fond of Rimbaud in my teens, it is a long time since I read him, so there were only a few places where I noticed a direct echo from Rimbaud's work, but this heightened my experience of the poetry.
I struggle to get something out of all of these poems, but I think they are doing something very interesting, and this is a challenging and worthwhile project. And when they work, they really work, as seen in this poem:
A Flash of Lightening
Slowly unravelling
the silence
at the margin of things
the waking light
shows us the work
we've done already
seeing as what runs
down through the willow
is the rain that still falls
after the rainfall
The collection uses form very strictly: the first two sections contain poems of five couplets, and the last section contains only sonnets. Boast uses this structure skillfully, and the poems never feel forced into a particular form: in fact, they fall very naturally. This alone is an achievement. A familiarity with Rimbaud's poetry probably also helps the reader -- while I was very fond of Rimbaud in my teens, it is a long time since I read him, so there were only a few places where I noticed a direct echo from Rimbaud's work, but this heightened my experience of the poetry.
I struggle to get something out of all of these poems, but I think they are doing something very interesting, and this is a challenging and worthwhile project. And when they work, they really work, as seen in this poem:
A Flash of Lightening
Slowly unravelling
the silence
at the margin of things
the waking light
shows us the work
we've done already
seeing as what runs
down through the willow
is the rain that still falls
after the rainfall
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