The poems in there are more like short stories than anything else. The first section, called “Looking Up to Skid Row”, is motivated by political messages like anti-militarism, child labour, celebrity, homosexual rights, etc. I’m usually wary of poetry that is loaded like that, but nothing is contrived in here, as the message is to be understood from the stories and not spelled out. Some other poems are light-hearted stories about crazy people with more of a social stigma backdrop than a particular political message. This first section is concluded by an unpunctuated story about a chance encounter that turns into bad luck, and totally hooked me up. The second section, called “18 Months and a Fork in the Road”, is made up of love poems, each dedicated to some initialed person by the title. Most of these suffer the plight of love poems in general; they have little relevance to the reader. (Frandroid Atreides)
chapbook, 24 pages, half-letter, Andreas Gripp, $1, 414-605 Proudfoot Lane, London, ON, N6H 4S2, [email protected]