Saturday, October 28, 2006
rob walker's Micromacro
rob walker, Micromacro (West Lakes, SA : Seaview Press, 2006) ISBN 978-174008-415-4.
Sometimes, it is difficult to start a review. The poems may be good, they may vary, but it may also be hard to find an angle into a collection, to talk about them passionately yet with a balanced outlook. You could say that you like a collection. As I do with rob walker's Micromacro. But there will come some caveat, perhaps.
I have one such caveat. The poems are, simply, uneven. Where they work, they demonstrate a clear voice, and a sensibility that is a token of rob's presence. He demonstrates, in such poems as "Love at the Physio" and "Slater", a clear sense of who is is what his poems are. He is, simply, a good, enjoyable poet. But his weaker poems, though technically not too dissimilar, read as poems that have appeared time and again. They fail to capture that voice: "Cut up/Rearrange", for example, aims at wit, but it is, ultimately, a tired wit. "Catsyntax" attempts to convey the sense of another life's thoughts, but it reminds us, too obviously, of Murray's more successful "Translations from the Natural World" sequence. We have seen these experiments before, and they lose their vividness and uniqueness as a result.
There is a Biblical verse, which runs along the line of "there is nothing new under the sun." And it is effectively right for the most part. But Micromacro, at its best, reminds us that, although we may have read similar poems (similar technically at least), they are unique here, now. What rob walker achieves is a sense of the contemporary, in his best work, and a sense of where and what the world contains for us. He enables us to see our world in his own way when he works at his best.
Micromacro does this by concentrating in large part upon the external world. "Slater", which I've already mentioned, is one such example. The line "rolypoly armadillo armies" works so well. Aside from the phonic level, with its combination of rhyme, assonance, alliteration and consonance, its metaphoric equivalence of the slaters to the largr, more overt armadillos is an organic metaphor that seizes at the imagination. We approach the microscopic, the detritus-dwelling insects, for example, through the macroscopic.
And this relationship, between what is greater and what is smaller, helps inform Micromacro and its wider themes (as should be evident from the title itself). It helps unify the book into a coherent collection, although such a coherency is hampered by the unevenness of the poems' quality. Yet, although Micromacro is a flawed book, in this regard, it is nonetheless an enjoyable and rewarding work. rob walker demonstrates clear promise here, and it is to be hoped that he continues writing. He has ability and Micromacro is proof of this. At the very least, obtain a copy, read it, and consider it. rob, like many other poets, deserves this chance to open up our world to us, and he does this with his best poems in this collection.
Sometimes, it is difficult to start a review. The poems may be good, they may vary, but it may also be hard to find an angle into a collection, to talk about them passionately yet with a balanced outlook. You could say that you like a collection. As I do with rob walker's Micromacro. But there will come some caveat, perhaps.
I have one such caveat. The poems are, simply, uneven. Where they work, they demonstrate a clear voice, and a sensibility that is a token of rob's presence. He demonstrates, in such poems as "Love at the Physio" and "Slater", a clear sense of who is is what his poems are. He is, simply, a good, enjoyable poet. But his weaker poems, though technically not too dissimilar, read as poems that have appeared time and again. They fail to capture that voice: "Cut up/Rearrange", for example, aims at wit, but it is, ultimately, a tired wit. "Catsyntax" attempts to convey the sense of another life's thoughts, but it reminds us, too obviously, of Murray's more successful "Translations from the Natural World" sequence. We have seen these experiments before, and they lose their vividness and uniqueness as a result.
There is a Biblical verse, which runs along the line of "there is nothing new under the sun." And it is effectively right for the most part. But Micromacro, at its best, reminds us that, although we may have read similar poems (similar technically at least), they are unique here, now. What rob walker achieves is a sense of the contemporary, in his best work, and a sense of where and what the world contains for us. He enables us to see our world in his own way when he works at his best.
Micromacro does this by concentrating in large part upon the external world. "Slater", which I've already mentioned, is one such example. The line "rolypoly armadillo armies" works so well. Aside from the phonic level, with its combination of rhyme, assonance, alliteration and consonance, its metaphoric equivalence of the slaters to the largr, more overt armadillos is an organic metaphor that seizes at the imagination. We approach the microscopic, the detritus-dwelling insects, for example, through the macroscopic.
And this relationship, between what is greater and what is smaller, helps inform Micromacro and its wider themes (as should be evident from the title itself). It helps unify the book into a coherent collection, although such a coherency is hampered by the unevenness of the poems' quality. Yet, although Micromacro is a flawed book, in this regard, it is nonetheless an enjoyable and rewarding work. rob walker demonstrates clear promise here, and it is to be hoped that he continues writing. He has ability and Micromacro is proof of this. At the very least, obtain a copy, read it, and consider it. rob, like many other poets, deserves this chance to open up our world to us, and he does this with his best poems in this collection.
# posted by Phillip A. Ellis @ 2:22 AM 
