There was no address for this one so I guess you’ll have to e-mail ’em. Attempting either tense itself it’s pretty much your standard poetry chapbook. To be honest, I flipped through this one trying to see if any of the poems stood out from any of the others. Unfortunately, I found that they were all pretty much consistent. The main criticism I have with Oan’s poems are that the ideas tend to get lost with the abstract language that is employed. I’ll give you an example of what I mean with an excerpt from the poem Unrefined. “Feeling the withdrawal thicken/with each indifferent moment/longings set,/and the spectral of another bare memory hung.” There doesn’t seem to be any concrete metaphor, simile, or analogy to grab on to. I found that the majority of the other poems in this collection also suffered from the same abstract language problem. Personally, I find that all the really good poetry that I’ve ever read always grounds itself in the concrete, maybe with the exception of sound poetry and some of bp Nichols’ experiments. (DP)
poetry chapbook, #5, 48 pgs, no price listed, Oan Arthur Lloyd, J&J Publishing, [email protected]