Reviews for One + one

The average rating for One + one based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-26 00:00:00 William James Poems from people not known as poets, yielding a equal mix of dedicatories, doggerel, and diamond. Their styles are mostly preserved, epitomised: the big grim novelists (Lessing, Coetzee, Fowles, Murdoch, Golding) write enormous grit-tooth verse; Heads bowed down or thrown Backward open-eyed Here and there are dark With terrible deaf pictures. Sounds rise up and vanish Into a pitted dome. It continues to rain. The acoustics being imperfect some people fidget. Something which is pure is come To a high magnetic field. Cry out as it passes on When shall we be healed? Raymond Briggs, a quiet, brutal elegy; David Lodge, some good meta jokes; animal bits from Jan Morris and Stella Gibbons; Wodehouse, two wonderful gossipy hyperboles. Adams manages to pick out the only Naomi Mitchison poems I don’t like. A lot of unbridled sentiment, e.g. Arnold Wesker depressing his children, Francis King's lies spiralling down, Enoch Powell lying awake listening to his wife's asthma; the writers aren't expecting the irony-making pressures of publication, or the obsessive polishing of any work that will be identified with them. So it's free indeed. Until Adams.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-09-08 00:00:00 Joseph Vargas I discovered some fantastic poets through this book. I will definately read more Carol Ann Duffy and Glen Maxwell intrigues me.