- Paperback: 80 pages
- Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd; First Edition edition (30 July 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1852244798
- ISBN-13: 978-1852244798
- Product Dimensions: 22.2 x 14 x 0.6 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,011,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
In these resonant, sometimes harrowing poems, Philip Gross grapples with difficult and unlikely subjects: ozone alerts ("In the ultraviolet light of what we know / the future begins to look pale / as the Middle Ages"); a sauna like "some lesser waiting-room / in Hell"; fluffy kitten postcards meant "for sore eyes, eczema'd"; and hotels marked UNSAFE STRUCTURE. All hint at our precarious futures, if not downright apocalyptic doom. The title poem provides a rare glimpse of the daily life of a daughter intent on starving herself, the "last night's pushed- aside / potatoes, greying like a tramp's teeth, / crusts, crumbs are a danger to her, / so much orbiting space junk / that's weightless for only so long." Here he also explores the root causes ("'I'm fat, look, fat...'") and historical legacy ("Maid-saint / fierce against the flesh / (burn it, burn it) denouncing / the witch in herself...the tinder and the heartless / blaze you might mistake / for holiness") of a dread disease. And in the heart-breaking "Visiting Persephone," the speaker's affinity to Zeus ("Can you picture him / going down to see her, fitting in / with the difficult visiting times?") is ultimately overshadowed by feelings of powerlessness:
The gifts he foisted on herHuman frailty is Gross's modus operandi, as in "Spirit Level": "We're crockery / slipped to the edge of a tilting table but so slowly / who'd notice, until...?". And in "Time Lapse" an innocent New Year's Eve toast to friends in an earlier time zone forces the question "what if time, once slipped, / went on slipping?" The way Gross sees it, we're all on a rackety bus, driven by a tunelessly humming driver. "[A]ll paths converge on nothing / but a ten-foot concrete square..." With daring finesse, however, he takes on dirges of personal and global disaster, and sets them to exquisite music. --Martha Silano
leave him dull, a Souza match
come shuffling to a halt
outside the darkened concert hall
where a child's violin
slips on difficult scales...
Review
Of an earlier book, Terry Eagleton wrote: 'Philip Gross knows how to make silence and suggestion resonate... he touches an alien, intractable dimension...Gross's poems are about lost bearings and blurred frontiers...a landscape bereft of assured relationships, haunted by the just-missedness of human contact' (Independent on Sunday).
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