My two favourite poems in this number are “Waving Goodbye" by Anne Stevenson and “Garden Variation” by the fine Canadian poet Jeffery Donaldson. In Donaldson’s poem in particular, I love the way syntax and line are modulated, the overall structuring of the poetic argument, the effect of someone musing out loud and the imaginative tact that leaves the mystery of the poem's story not fully unfolded. “Garden Variation” is an epithalamion. I hope its dedicatees enjoyed it as much as I did.
Clive Watkins
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