CHRISTOPHER HARTER: ABSTRACT STILL LIFE Pathwise Press PO Box 178 Erie PA 16512 USA ISBN 0 9675226 0 9 $3 email Pathwise Press visit the website of Pathwise Press Web design by This page last updated: 11th December 2007. |
CHRISTOPHER HARTER: ABSTRACT STILL LIFE | |
Harter's poetry expresses the fractured nature of modern life through the use of disjointed syntax and the juxtaposition of startling images. His style draws both on the robust colloquialisms of an American independent poetry tradition and the cold cerebralness of modernism as in CHILD MAN: All in which Youth found its way to Experience We did last from one to thirteen That time when playful offerings and voicings spoke volumes in playground cacophony Found ten years and a day hence hung to the wall A call to Parisian and New Yorke fellows taped alongside the graffiti we left with our blood and in our throatsI found HER HUSBAND'S COFFIN chillingly precise in its use of detail to evoke memory and personal history: One item for each year, labeled by a white tag with place and date. Each as representative as a mile maker or an X scrawled on a map.BACKYARD FISH POND juxtaposes two different timeframes, that of the golden fish of the Japanese court trained to swim in a figures-8 ... The figure, not a number but an infinitywith a more prosaic fish existence carp-mouthed and hungry behind the lily pad"the final line was satisfyingly affirmative in its closure: It is good to be a fish again.ABSTRACT STILL LIFE contains an interesting variety of themes; I'm sure that many readers would find this pamphlet a satisfying buy. | ||
reviewer: L. Kiew. |