Reviews for Love is

The average rating for Love is based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-27 00:00:00 Felice Osborne Patten's first volume of poetry, Little Johnny's Confession, was considered a masterpiece when it was published in 1967. The title poem Little Johnny's Confession has a blend of dream, violence, and pathos. Little Johnny borrows a war-time souvenir, a machine gun which belongs to his father, and 'eliminates' a number of his 'small enemies'. He runs away but the police are after him, asking: Have you seen him, He is seven years old, Likes Pluto, Mighty Mouse And Biffo the bear, Have you seen him, anywhere? ('Little Johnny's Confession' - Little Johnny's Confession) The boy knows he will be trapped in the end, when the tracker dogs pick up the scent of his lollypops. The amalgam of innocence, bizarre situation, childhood day-dreaming, pathos and tenderness is characteristic of Patten's work. This was what young audiences wanted at a time when the world was violent, morally confused, and turning towards the Hippie peace era.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-27 00:00:00 Charles Thomas Brian Patten was the first poet I found for myself, exploring the world opened up by the Penguin "Mersey Sound" anthology. So re-reading this book, found on a bookshelf in my mum's house, is a way of stepping back 40-some years, which is weird, and remembering how good I thought the book was then. It's no longer the best poetry I've ever read, but there's still poems I like, and 'Song for Last Year's Wife' is good, and Little Johnny hunted down to a swing-park last stand by lolly-pop-sniffing tracker dogs is still a sort of hero.