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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Response to David Anthony's "Words to Say", 15 Jan 2003
David Anthony's "Words to Say is a wonderful book, full of all the right things that poetry ought to have: seriousness, moral weight, feeling, complexity, music, without any pretentiousness or self-consciousness or wrong notes. What the poet does with formal patterns is deft and casual, even a potentially hard one for English, like the Petrarchan sonnet. He manages to get real thought into the triolet, and he makes it feel natural. His rhymes, whether perfect or slant, seem inevitable. It's good to find among these poems several that are already familiar from some of the best sites on the internet; the unfamiliar ones are just as stunning and immediately inviting.
The Foreword by Helena Nelson gets it right when it notes Anthony's "delight in his craft." This is beautiful work, enhanced by the art; I'm grateful to have it on this side of the Atlantic!
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Words worth saying, 6 Sep 2003
Words To Say
by David Gwilym Anthony
I enthusiastically recommend this book.
If anyone wants to understand what it was like to be a decent man who lived in England in the second half of the 20th century, they would find most answers in these poems.
David Anthony is completely comfortable with the sonnet which he uses as naturally as ordinary speech. His sonnets encompass many moods and events.
He also is a master of the triolet and the villanelle.
His villanelle “Plague”, about the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, is a heart-breaking evocation of the British countryside during that experience. It must be a poem that will stay in the literature.
His humorous poems are genuinely funny. His serious poems are grave and unforced.
The poem’s content always conceals the consummate craft that contains
it. Because the poems make no strident effort to be noticed they sink deeper into the reader’s mind.
Sensationalised events become human again in this poet’s quiet words. Topics that only a real poet dare approach, such as the murder of little Jamie Bulger by two older children, are seen with wide compassion and social involvement.
There is something almost Shakespearean about his ability to respect each character in his poems. There are no small roles here.
“On the Suicide of a Friend” is intimate and loving.
“Boy Soldier” inspired by a faded photo of his father at the age of fourteen is quietly poignant.
A peopled landscape is always present.
These poems will give great pleasure to those without expert knowledge and even more to those who realise how much skill was needed to produce such simplicity.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Words To Say, 12 Dec 2002
The first thing one notices about this book is that it is beautifully made, handsomely illustrated by Anthony's fellow Welshman, Merfyn Davies. Upon delving into it, one discovers to one's delight that these very formal poems are as well made as the artifact in which they reside. As the American poet Alicia Stallings notes on the jacket, "David Anthony's work shows that a poem doesn't have to raise its voice to get our attention, and that control is not the opposite of feeling." The author is a poet of a refined and mature sensibility, and I highly recommend this collection.
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