Meadow

Poetry. These fourteen poems, ranging from Intellectual Compost Four (beginning is a minor danger) to No Music (bones lie across the country/covered in rare mixed leaves/unable to keep them//to choose the surest gain), are spare, delicate, unerringly thoughtful. Tom Raworth, word comet streaking across the night sky of our market-driveling-cruel-funny culture: This book illuminates with its own black light -- ’moving explosion ... shadows of pure colour ... blank cartoons nerves of speed/ dissolving scars ...’ As always, Raworth’s poetry is full of humor and rage and love and utmost vocal precision -- Joan Retallack.