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Unread 06-19-2006, 12:52 PM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Iowa City, IA, USA
Posts: 10,407
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David,
I too have been trying to post a review of your book, but keep getting the message that the service is unavailable at this time. I will keep trying, but meanwhile I have posted it below. People who know your work already will probably feel that they don't need this information, but I was aiming the review at those who don't.

Susan


Fashions exist in poetry, as in most things, and David Anthony is not afraid to be unfashionable--both in using traditional forms such as sonnets, villanelles, and triolets and in revealing emotions such as affection, sympathy, and nostalgia, which can get writers labeled sentimental. But there is a subversive character to his use of forms: he uses the triolet, usually a lightweight form, to tackle serious themes, as in "A Winter Funeral," and can poke fun at the conventions of sonnet-writing in the course of writing a sonnet, as in "Stuffing It In." He has some amusing versifications of well-known jokes (my favorite is "Cushioning the Blow") and takes a wide-ranging interest in the world around him, in poems about his native Wales, England, America, and Japan, showing a fondness for Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Harry Potter, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Always accessible, he can be conversational, but most often is notable for the lilting, lyrical quality of his lines.
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