Poets and Poems: David Russell and "Quadrilateral: Utterances"

The first thing you notice about the poems of Quadrilateral: Utterances by David Russell is the language. It is a language of word pictures and images that cascade one after the other in a virtual torrent of imagination.  

The first poem, “Hard Times of Old England,” is the first of 47 poems and is a good example. It’s a poem about Brexit, and you think, oh, no, more politics. And it is political. But it presents images of trucks choking ports as they crowd to gain entry, rotting fish, services straining for workers, and a government content to bumble its way through. Russell floods the reader’s mind with pictures that, regardless of what you might think about Brexit, force you to confront what it means.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: David Russell and “An Ever River”

The idea binding the poems of An Ever River, the new collection by British poet David Russell, is found in the title poem. In fact, it’s found in the title of the title poem. Life is a river, an ever river, flowing forever through time, containing and absorbing natural and human creation and memory. The river swallows pollution, sludge, war, monuments, and palaces, and cleanses them all.

The collection’s 26 poems address such natural phenomena as whales, earthquakes, “eco-thunderstorms,” and scorpions, and then go one to include humans’ natural phenomena, like panic, progress, dreams, mid-life, old love letters, and even cremation. The natural and the human blend together, or perhaps the human, good and bad, are extensions of the natural. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.